S&H Explorations for Bb Clarinet and ARP 2600 Synthesizer

Published on Nov 11, 2013 Ronald Pellegrino

"Since 1967 I've worked with a lot of different sound and light synthesizers. Whenever I get a new instrument my MO is, early on in the exploratory stage, to challenge myself to do a piece with it. As director of the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music Electronic Music Studios I added the ARP 2600 to the facility in 1971 around the same time Larry McDonald, the faculty clarinetist, asked me to compose a piece for him. At the time of Larry's commission I was exploring the Sample and Hold function, thus the first part of the title, S&H Explorations. This is an excerpt of that piece (the final two thirds).

Larry and I performed this piece numerous times at museums, cultural centers and universities from Ohio to Connecticut. I also gave performances with top clarinetists in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas and New York City. It generated a lot of gigs so at the time I thought of it as my "money piece". Other composers definitely liked it; I was part of a composer's gathering where Luciano Berio was conducting a master class and this was only piece he wanted to talk about to the chagrin of the other composers. It was composed so only I could do the synthesizer part; talk about painting a piece into a corner.

The clarinet part is traditionally notated in great detail. Larry is an outstanding musician, nevertheless to get what I wanted to hear I often had to sing the music to him and the same was true of the other fine musicians who performed it. For me those experiences highlighted once more the inadequacies of traditional notational systems and I was well on my way to setting them aside to focus on the development of my personal raga system and real time composition for the rest of my musical life. I count myself as being very fortunate for having taken that road. It's infinitely more exciting and more productive for me personally and for any artists who have worked with me."