2000
Title: Cantus
Instrumentation: Bass clarinet
Year: 2000
Duration: 6 min.
Premiere: San Diego, USA 2000
Performer: Anthony Burr
Cantus is a reference to the discantus style of Pérotin which is a highly structured rhythmic style in late Medieval music. In my work, a virtual polyphony can be heard through the florid, fast-moving embellishments of implied voices often moving in different tempi over a sustained, slow-moving Gregorian chant tenor. The solo bass clarinet emerges as the physical nexus between these multiple voices singing.