With the advent of modern key systems, B-flat and A clarinets are the only instruments needed to play in all keys. Clarinets in different keys also have subtly different timbres or tone colors. Before the development of fully mechanized key systems in the second half of the nineteenth century, clarinets were built in a wide range of different keys because the instrument functioned best in its home key or those closely related to it. By the 1760s, it had become part of the orchestra and during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this highly versatile instrument spread to nearly all forms and styles of music making including military and concert bands, jazz, klezmer and a variety of world music traditions. The effect, by change of accent, is to vary the perception of that which in fact is not changing.The invention of the clarinet at the beginning of the eighteenth century is attributed to Johann Christoph Denner. In the last movement of New York Counterpoint the bass clarinets function to accent first one and then the other of these possibilities while the upper clarinets essentially do not change. As is often the case when I write in this meter, there is an ambiguity between whether one hears measures of 3 groups of 4 eight notes, or 4 groups of 3 eight notes. The change of tempo is abrupt and in the simple relation of 1:2. New York Counterpoint is in three movements: fast, slow, fast, played one after the other without pause. In the nature of the patterns, their combination harmonically, and in the faster rate of change, the piece reflects my recent works, particularly Sextet (1985). The use of interlocking repeated melodic patterns played by multiples of the same instrument can be found in my earliest works, Piano Phase (for 2 pianos or 2 marimbas) and Violin Phase (for 4 violins) both from 1967. The opening pulses ultimately come from the opening of Music for 18 Musicians (1976). The compositional procedures include several that occur in my earlier music. In New York Counterpoint the soloist pre-records ten clarinet and bass clarinet parts and then plays a final 11th part live against the tape. The piece is a continuation of the ideas found in Vermont Counterpoint (1982), where as soloist plays against a pre-recorded tape of him or her self. It was composed during the summer of 1985. New York Counterpoint was commissioned by The Fromm Music Foundation for clarinettist Richard Stolzman.
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