Gravitations - for three clarinets

Year: 2024

Duration: ca. 5:30

Purchase: Coming soon!

Gravitations was composed for Alyssa Dickens, Matthew Bailey, and Sam Brown as a showpiece that could be used for an application for performance at the International Clarinet Association. All three of them began studying music at Texas Christian University when I was finishing up the final year of my own undergraduate music studies there, and I witnessed firsthand how quickly they demonstrated their talent and skill upon their arrival to TCU. I was honored that they would ask to me to write something for them, and it was thrilling to compose a work designed to showcase the abilities of these excellent young musicians.

When Alyssa approached me about this idea, she also mentioned that, in addition to her music studies, she had begun seeking a double major in physics. I find that to be quite admirable—acquiring a double major in two separate subjects is no small feat, indeed—and although I’m no scientist myself, I have long had a great love and wonder for physics. It felt only natural, then, that I might consider exploring something related to physics. In brainstorming about what to write, the clarinet’s astonishingly wide range led me to consider how it might relate to gravity, and I quickly conceptualized the work as a “visit” to a few locations in our Solar System.

In this spirit, Gravitations is an unbroken series of three vignettes each taking place on a different familiar celestial body. We begin on the Sun, whose gravity is approximately 28 times that of Earth; although we could not actually walk on the sun due to its lack of a solid surface, this vignette imagines we could and locks us down in the chalumeau (the clarinet’s lowest register). Eventually, we break into the clarion register, where we revisit the familiar gravity of our home planet. Here, we feel refreshingly free and relaxed; but we yearn to reach higher, and as we continue to leap upward, we eventually break into the altissimo range and land on the Moon. With its incredibly light gravity, we can effortlessly soar into the skies. And yet, no matter how weak the gravity may be, we still must obey the laws of physics; gravity pulls us back down, and the work ends by bringing us back to where we began.

Gravitations is a celebration of the gravity that binds us together as musicians and as human beings, and of the determination we must have to take new paths (such as a double major in physics!)—perhaps heavy at first, but lessening as we learn, grow, and make ever-higher leaps and bounds.