Achilles’ Heels

Achilles’ Heels (2018) 5’ (clarinet, violin, cello)

Achilles’ Heels was written between June 4-10th, 2018, in response to a prompt by the “2018 Rapido! Take Five!!!” Composition Competition. Composers who wished to participate in this contest were sent the guidelines for a new work on the morning June 4, which were as follows:

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Compose a new, original work of 4-6 minutes between June 4 – 17, 2018.
Required Instrumentation: Flute, Clarinet, Cello
No instruments other than flute, clarinet, and cello are permitted. Only the B-flat clarinet may be used (no doubling on other instruments).

Required Form: The focus of this new work will be a dance movement or movements.
The theme should be original and scored for the entire trio. The piece may be a single or multiple movement work.

This prompt made me groan somewhat, as I consider dancing to be my personal Achilles’ Heel, my physical gracefulness all seeming to have settled south of my wrists. Also, a dance for three seemed an awkward notion. I thought a little, since there was not much time for strategizing on this occasion, and recalled watching a demonstration of Italian Renaissance dances for sets of three many years earlier — it was a congenial enough set-up: the participants reverencing individually, then in the possible combinations of pairs, then as a trio, with soli and duetti happening flexibly throughout. Not so much of a competition as a prototypical ménage-à-trois. I also thought about putting the dance in a basic meter of five, for maximum awkwardness (to match my own), and when I realized I was considerably short of the required 4-minute mark, decided to (roughly) retrograde-inversion the whole affair, which reminded me of the oft-repeated notion about Ginger Rogers doing everything Fred Astaire did, just backwards and in heels.

These were the little ideas swirling around my head in creating this peculiar scherzo.