| Daniel Goode's Clarinet Songs has long been a favorite on the new music concert circuit. It is a 75- minute suite for solo clarinet which Goode began writing for himself in 1979, and reached its current form in 1991. It uses all of Goode's virtuosic techniques distilled into sixteen "Songs without Words," a poetics of the new clarinet. It is made up of a series of individual pieces, each a sound world of its own, based on some unique material, perhaps a specific technical, poetic, or sonic idea, or some synthesis of these. Most use circular breathing for continuity and use alternate fingerings which produce non-tempered intervals with unusual, striking timbres.
"Clarinet Songs proved to be searching solo studies." - Tim Page, The New York Times
"Clarinet Songs are marked by deep emotion and a meditative virtuosity." - Grove's Dictionary of American Music
"Daniel Goode is one of those rare spirits who never abandoned the purity of '60s conceptualism, and whose work has been too neglected since the country lurched in a more superficial direction." - Kyle Gann, The Village Voice |