Chamber and Solo

Premiered by Ryan Stockhausen, clarinet; Xiaoke Guo, violin; Cassandra Kaczor, piano

Video performers: Meghan Colbert, clarinet; Xiaoke Guo, violin; Cassandra Kaczor, piano

Torque-ish Rondo

(2016) for clarinet, violin, and piano

The title of Torque-ish Rondo is a play on “Turkish Rondo,” the famous movement from Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A, K. 331. The form of my piece is also a rondo, in which the repetitions of the main theme are interspersed with contrasting themes and keys. Both the main theme and the complementary themes illustrate torque, or a mechanical twisting force, in their own way. The structure of the main musical idea is reminiscent of a piece of rotating machinery, with its off-beat accents, as well as the way in which it gets churned out in an almost mechanical fashion. The secondary theme has a slow twisting quality, one that reminds me of the all-too-common struggle to open a pickle jar. To complete the idea of a musical pun on Mozart, I have included subtle aspects of “Turkish Rondo” in this piece.