Music by DANIEL DORFF |
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PROGRAM NOTES by the composer | |
Perennials for Flute, Clarinet in A, and Piano |
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A
day after I returned home, Wally and Sherry asked if I'd accept a new
commission for flute, clarinet, and piano, to celebrate the retirement of
Helen Ann Shanley and Richard Shanley, the flute and clarinet professors at
Baylor University, where Sherry had studied with Helen Ann.
While
beginning work on the trio in July 2010, I was learning to garden for the first
time and had decided to spend the summer enriching my new backyard with
perennials that I could plant once and enjoy forever. I was very taken with this
metaphor about building permanent structures and have always felt composing
is about building repertoire that endures, rather than popping out annual crops.
This attitude parallels just about everything else in
life, building for the longterm, like the messages of The Three Little Pigs
(which I've set to music) and The Ant and the Grasshopper (which I
haven't set yet). Relationships
between people are no different, and in
celebrating the Shanleys teaching together at Baylor for 40 years, the
parallels between all these "perennial vs. annual" metaphors became
striking. I had to call the trio PERENNIALS to tie everything together -
celebrating the Shanleys' lives and careers together, and everything else
perennial about ideals in music and life.
The
7-minute commission request turned into a 5-movement suite of 21 minutes, and it became
something of a life cycle. |
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last updated February 20, 2020 home |
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