Performance: Oleg Tantsov (bass clarinet) and the author (electronics).
“Smena” (Kazan City, Russia). Apr. 8, 2021

An abbreviation “ISM” is an ironic allusion to IDM genre (“Intelligent Dance
Music”), so “ISM” means “Intelligent Sitting Music”. In the piece there are bass clarinet with two long delays and a click which sounds through the speakers, not through the headphones. An artistic idea is to avoid headphones, cables and devices which inhabit a performer. At the same time the click becomes an extra part of the piece. It starts with regular beat marking and then changes to flexible rhythm and finally imitate the clarinet part (and this is a real hint to IDM compositions where long continuous pitches often oppose to sophisticated percussion rhythm).

The clarinet part is ‘reflected’ by two delays and thus represents a 3-voice canon. But it is written in such manner that the polyphony and starting a new ‘voice’ is not marked but hidden: all episodes of the work smoothly change one another and every episode is gradually ‘filling’ by the sound.

An impression from my trip to the Young Composers Academy in Tchaikovsky-city (2018) in Moscow — Izhevsk train became an additional musical material for the work. Rails were producing sustained pitches building a chord reminding resonating minor triad on long turnings.

ISM for Reflected Bass Clarinet and Click

nikolaykhrust