Cloak, Concerto for Clarinet and Ensemble

Cloak, Concerto for Clarinet and Ensemble, explores a range of expression and technique in its three movements.  While the clarinet is the soloist in the work the ensemble’s part is, in many ways, equally intricate and demanding. In this regard the piece is also a concerto for the ensemble as well as for the clarinet. 

In first movement the clarinet’s role is untraditional with regard to concerto form.  Instead of occupying the role of the soloist, the clarinet, through most of the movement, plays a subtle, coloristic role, giving the overall instrumental timbre a shimmering quality through the use of multiphonics.  These multiphonic sonorities have both harmonic and inharmonic properties in relation to the underlying harmony, causing soft beating patterns to emerge from the texture. 

The clarinet takes on a soloistic role in the second movement, where it plays a quasi-improvisatory and florid part over a contrapuntal accompaniment in the ensemble. 

In the third movement the focus moves between the clarinet and ensemble in alternating passages. In the climax of the work, a theme that has been previously heard in various secondary guises over the first two movements emerges as perhaps the principle theme of the concerto, played here by the clarinet, violin and viola over a full accompaniment.  In the concluding section motivic material from the first movement is revisited and played in alternation by the soloist and ensemble in new transformations, giving the listener a new perspective on the material.

The title of the concerto, which hints at something that is secret or hidden, is a nod toward the shadowy ambience of the espionage world walked by agents of CSIS, whose daring true stories are neither celebrated here in Canada by our news agencies nor dramatized by our nation’s spy fiction novelists.  Something had to be done.   

Cloak, Concerto for Clarinet and Ensemble is related to another mine entitled Cloak of ‘Allophenia, which is scored for orchestra.  The two were written more or less at the same time and each are variations on the other. 

Cloak was premiered by New Music Concerts with Max Christie playing the solo clarinet part and with the composer conducting.