Fragile

My work is a short meditation about Fragility- in nature, life, soul, body, feelings, emotions, and so on. A dreamy, transparent, and fragile musical space, with “magic” and caressing sounds, suggesting a tender and strange light, is invaded by threatening shadows, sad thoughts, sarcastic laughs, or painful cries. Although all these shall gradually disappear, they remain obsessively in our memory,  proof of our fragility.

The clarinet incantation (inspired from Romanian archaic music, on a low A pedal) is gradually absorbed into the medium and low register while turning into a brief and tense accumulation. Suddenly, a new section (giusto, giocoso, meccanico,  strano, poco sarcastico) changes into an obsessive mechanical pulsation “in stretto”. The next segment, drammatico, is the tensest climax of the work; the chromatic, melismatic clarinet monody is accompanied by heterophonic pedals (strings), crying chords (woods), and a very low and full of tension pedal (piano, percussion). The last section returns to the initial atmosphere, using the same melodic elements: a gradual opening from the middle to the high and low registers, always on and around the obsessive E pedal, followed by a continual dissipation in the very high register.

 “Fragile ” was written for the “Profil” ensemble from Bucharest, who performed it for the first time during the International Festival “Intersonanzen” in Potsdam, Germany.