Title: Clair de Lune
Author: Claude Debussy
Time: 5 minutes, 30 Seconds
Orchestration: Clarinet Quartet
Kind: Arrangement
Instrumentation: 1 e-flat clarinet, 2 b-flat clarinets, & 1 bass clarinet
Commissioned by: 10th & Broadway Clarinet Quartet
Andy Hudson
Brady Richards
Michael Waller
Jason Thorne (Bass)
Key: D-flat
Written: 2009 / Premiered: Spring 2009
Program Notes:
Featured on such avenues as Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 classic “Oceans Eleven” franchise, Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” is a work that has often been described in hyperbolic terms as perhaps one of the most beautiful, romantic, and well known piano works ever composed. I was asked by my good friends Andrew Hudson & Brady Richards to arrange this work for their clarinet quartet ‘10th & Broadway.’ Imagine my excitement at the project, and hunger to explore my own fascination with that most memorable piano work. It was in thinking through this translation from the “inner hammers of the piano” to the “tubular wooden wind chamber of the clarinet,” that the initial idea for my approach to this arrangement began to establish itself.
Throughout the work, trills, tremolos, and cascading scalar and arpeggiated passages are employed, each as a means to explore the tessitura of the instruments, against a varied dynamic palette. The resultant setting hopefully reflects the flowing, lyric quality of the original melodies, while conveying the unique character of its harmonic palette. Indeed, this work (part of a larger four-movement suite for solo piano) was considered unique for its time. The clarinet sonorities have been arranged here in such a way as to help better capture and enhance the mysterious allure of this wonderful work. “Clair de Lune” is dedicated to my friends and fellow musicians, “10th & Broadway.”
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