CHRISTOS HATZIS
Extreme Unction Bass Clarinet & String Orchestra
P R O M E T H E A N E D I T I O N S
EXTREME UNCTIONChristos Hatzis
Facsimile Study Score
(2011)
was commissioned by Sinfonia Toronto for Jeff Reilly with financial support from the Ontario Arts Council.
This edition is a facsimile of the original score provided by the composer.
© 2011 Promethean Editions LimitedPO Box 10-143
WellingtonNEW ZEALAND
www.promethean-editions.com+64 4 473 5033+64 4 473 5066
christos hatzis
program notes Extreme Unction is the name given to the last rite of the Catholic Church reserved for people who are on the threshold of passing from the material consciousness and state of being to a different one. It was commissioned by Sinfonia Toronto for my good friend (and bass clarinettist extraordinaire) Jeff Reilly with financial assistance from the Ontario Arts Council. As the title implies, Extreme Unction is a dark piece about dying and the difficult but inevitable transformation from a physical consciousness to a higher one. It depicts the quiet opening of the floodgates of the Spirit, as our connection to the material world weakens and eventually ceases altogether. This process is often not a willing surrender. It alternates between our sense of an approaching light and the peace and joy that accompany it and the often violent efforts of our physical body to cling on to that which we already know and hold dear.
The idea of musically treating the two contradicting emotions that physical death engenders has been with me for quite some time. However, it was not until I first witnessed Jeff Reilly's amazing ability to quickly navigate between the sonic extremes of darkness and despair on one hand and luminescence and peace on the other that I realized that the musical treatment of this subject was simply waiting all this time for Jeff to come along. Given the fluidity of his playing, impossible to capture with the usual timbral snapshots that one finds in catalogued extended techniques for the instrument, I decided to start with extensive workshops with Jeff before embarking on the actual composition. In November 2009, I visited Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Jeff lives and works, and recorded his bass clarinet sounds in several sessions during the course of a week. Jeff gave me passages of extended techniques (multiphonic sequences, cascading the overtone series, playing in extreme registers and dynamics and singing and playing at the same time) and some improvised playing which was more elegant than anything I could hope to compose for him. Once back in Toronto, I started cataloguing all this material and combined smaller segments of Jeff's playing with my own MIDI interpolations in order to create a clarinet part that best described my artistic intentions for this work. The orchestration for the strings included semiotically-‐rich timbres, such as violent gesturing, microtonally tuned overtone spectra, an ever-‐present heartbeat-‐like sound in the lower strings and distant echoes of Doppler effects reminiscent of passing ambulances. All these effects notwithstanding, the creative spotlight always remains focused on the bass clarinet and its wide sonic and dramatic pallet.
This unorthodox way of working (using pre-‐recorded and often extensive sound complexes as building blocks for composition) meant that I was constantly hearing Jeff "performing" the piece that I was still in the process of composing. The manipulation of the material, however, was such that novel ways of musical notation had to be invented and further workshops with Jeff were necessary to ensure that the thus manipulated material was still possible on his instrument. Jeff was encouraging: "if I did it once, I should be able to do it again, no matter how much you twist it."
Half notated, half improvised, Extreme Unction is a composition that allows for an imaginary glimpse of our afterlife and of our instinctive struggle to cling on to the things we know. It is a meditation on dying and on what may lie beyond, as well as a (hopefully) early attempt to come to terms with this important and inevitable milestone in my own life.
notation
bass clarinet & strings Two systems of microtonal tunings are used in Extreme Unction: quarter-‐tones and third-‐tones. The following notation marks denote this notation:
two thirds of a tone flat (from the natural pitch)
quarter-‐tone sharp (from the natural pitch)
quarter-‐tone flat (from the natural pitch)
When the pitches of the overtone series are the result of a natural glissando on either the bass clarinet or the strings (in other words, when they do not need to be tuned specifically by the player), the microtonally altered pitches of the overtone series are notated with their closest neighbour in the equal temperament tuning system. This is done to avoid unnecessary notational complexity.
bass clarinet stems with no noteheads indicate pitches of the performer's choice within the general register where the stem ends.
small noteheads indicate approximate pitches on or very close to the indicated pitch.
Instructions for the production of the indicated extended techniques accompany the music in the score and the bass clarinet part. Please consult the available demo recording for more clarity
as to the desired sonic result.
horizontal arrow indicates a gradual transition from the instruction at the left to that at the right of the arrow.
"play and sing": sing through the mouthpiece while playing so that very complex sound complexes occur as a result.
When the word "identical" with a horizontal bracket is used, the material under the bracket should be an identical and mechanical repetition of the material that just preceded this indication. The effect should be reminiscent of mechanical looping.
Even though pitches or other musical parameters are left unspecified, the performer still needs to adhere to this principle of identical replication of the material (s)he just played.
multiphonics and other extended techniques are shown with the main fingerings indicated as open or closed holes and/or with additional verbal instructions. The rhomboid lower notehead indicates the fundamental which should be audible all the time.
"slap tongue." the technique is produce by closing the reed off and creating a suction in the mouthpiece and then releasing that suction by an explosive click of the tongue and a simultaneous injection of air. It should sound like a very loud "pizzicato" sound.
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Extreme Unction
Christos Hatzis
Copyright © 2011 Christos Hatzis & Promethean EditionsAll Rights Reserved
for bass clarinet and strings
Duration: 10 minutes
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Extreme Unction8
The bass clarinet cadenza should feel less like a virtuosic display of extended techniques and more as a last defiant act against death. It should be angst-driven, dark and gestural but with no rhyme or reason (the gestures should feel dissociated and uncontrolled.) There should be extremes of register, dynamics and density and all available energy should be expended. As the cadenza is approaching its end, the "convulsions" should be separated by increasing amounts of silence with no movement on stage either by the performer or the orchestra during those moments of silence. The last silence should be inordinately long. In the material towards the end the highest note available to the player should be emphasized (the same pitch should start the descending motion of measure 228.
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