Author: Aaron Gallant
Date: 2001-01-19 06:36
Hello all. I'm posting this because I'm asking for advise about unaccompanied clarinet solos. I'm a senior in high school, obviously I play clarinet (and sax and other stuff, but yeah), and it's about time that I have to be thinking about the annual "Solo and Ensemble" contest. I don't have to enter it, but I kind of want to, after all I'm very much into music of all sorts and such.
Which is sort of my problem. The Solo and Ensemble contest, at least where I live, is essentially one restrictive genre: classical, but more specifically "5 to 10 minutes of a clarinet playing exercises in scales and arpeggios, some tongued and some not, in various keys, with occasional rhythmic variations and melodic phrases, all accompanied by a piano playing chords beneath you also with occasional melodic phrases." It's not really that bad, but regardless I personally prefer jazz/swing/improv. I personally wish that they'd keep their old contest, but make a new one that allows for jam sessions and such *shrug* oh well.
Anyway, what I want to do is play an unaccompanied solo, both because that means I don't have to get an accompaniest (both a hassle, and also makes it hard to rehearse with them regularly enough, and even though I'm confident that they'll play everything techncially "right" I personally don't like it as I want to make music, not arpeggios and scales over chords, and I don't know of an accompaniest who I trust to truly make music with me), and because I think it's cool. Last year, when I was a junior, a senior of the time played an unaccompanied solo by Stravinsky. I forget the exact title, but it was something simple like "Three pieces" or something... maybe it was five. Anyway, I don't want to play that exact same one the year after she played it because that'd be kind of obviously copying and such, but I do want to find an unaccompanied solo.
So I went over to good old google.com and did a search. Here were the best places I was able to find:
http://www.schirmer.com/S/clarinet/solo.htm
http://www.hickeys.com/pages/clalone.htm
http://www.jeanne-inc.com/clarinet_unaccompanied.htm
http://www.dornpub.com/ken/unclar.html
Anyway, all the sites lists maybe a dozen different unaccompanied solos, all for sale. It doesn't really give any info on them, and some sites share some solos, so maybe there are 30 solos total that I could choose from. I actually plan to get plenty of them long term, because they sound fun to play and mess with. However, my short term concern is figuring out one for the contest.
I'm concerned with two things, primarily:
1) Length: the longest I can play is 10 minutes for the contest, and I also want it to be I'd say at least 5 minutes long, plus or minus
2) Genre: the contest wants classical music. Now a lot of "modern" stuff still counts as classical, if you're talking about Stravinsky or Shostakovitch. But some of these things look like they're hot off the presses. It's hard to tell, and I'd prefer not to guess and end up accidentally choosing one that they deem unacceptable.
I likely will see if I can get more specific info from the contest people, but at this point that's unlikely. So essentially what I'm asking is any advise any of you have for an unaccompanied clarinet solo that technically counts as "classical" but isn't just an exercise in scales and arpeggios, and is 5-10 minutes in length. If you see it/it is on one of the four websites I've already found, cool. If you know of a solo not on those sites, go ahead and name it anyway, but please if you know of a place I can order it from list that too.
Thank you for your time for reading this behemoth of a post, and I hope you can help me with my dilemma.
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