Love is wonderful and strange, going through many motions. Love at first sight, sang by a clarinet soliloquy, is a blinding experience, gloriously unaware of the ups and downs of love. It starts simply, encapsulated, but quickly the underpinning shifts with dissonant harmonies creeping through, hinting at conflict. This stormy sea still drives toward the shore with the emergence of the first theme, hopefully coming up for air. Like a wave that rises and falls, the texture thickens and becomes nebulous. Love becomes a tumultuous heartache, pushed along by a percussive drive, until through the chaos, the themes converge into a triumphant realization that balance exists in all things. This acceptance leads back to the joyful clarinet solo as the cycle begins anew. It is the constant ebb and flow, push and pull, ceaselessly caught in the cycle… ”because love, like music, is never truly complete.”
written for Elyse Lauren Showalter
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Premiere performance on February 25th, 2017 by the Mutationem Winds
Marcus Moore, soloist