Composer: Trevor Bača.
Forces: bass clarinet.
Duration: 16 minutes.
Page 2 of Myrkr (2015) for bass clarinet.
Program note
The following inscription, written by the composer, appears at the head of the score:
Architecture of darkness: footfall and then warmth. Around us he draws the sheets. To both lover and beloved night extends a hand: she leads us, docent in the house of dreams, to the terra incognita of our sleep. We understand better in this place, unknown on our maps, where sight takes its leave and where objects recede: nightfall and touch and our comprehension (all at once) of skin and the dark and its shapes.“Myrkr” is the Old Norse for “darkness.” The piece proposes pathways into sleep. Five courses crisscross the music in voices distinguished by colors special to the instrument and by the jittery durations used in the lines’ animation. The trajectory of the piece sinks slowly downward — dark flowers garlanded together — until memory releases the music into morning.
First performances
World premiere given by Richard Haynes on 24 October 2015 in Paine Hall on the campus of Harvard University.
West Coast premiere to be given by Madison Greenstone on 7 April 2017 in the Black Box Theater on the campus of the University of California, San Diego.
Midwest premiere to be given by Andrea Vos-Rochefort on 18 May 2017 at Hoffner Lodge in Cincinnati, Ohio.