Six Hours in the Isolation Booth
Six Hours in the Isolation Booth was inspired by my friend Eleanor Saxton telling me the story of one of her early breakups. I was so moved by her story, in fact, that I immediately grabbed my clarinet and began composing, and in the middle of the night, I had completed a 10-minute composition in little more than two hours. The piece, however, is not so much about the breakup as it is about my own reactions to hearing her tell the story. Ellie's story depicted bitterness and rage, but left me feeling lonely and vulnerable, and it is these latter emotions that made it into my composition. In this respect, Six Hours is one of my more personal compositions. In fact, it is probably the first composition that really reflects my experience with clinical depression. Although I have been struggling with depression for most of my life, most of my compositions have been more optimistic in mood, and Six Hours is one of the few pieces that depicts my more somber moods.
Aspects of my depression find musical expression in Six Hours in a variety of ways. The texture is quite sparse, even for a solo instrument, with breath-length phrases consisting of only three or four notes fading in and out of existence, bracketed by silence. These phrases attempt to coalesce into longer overarching lines, but they often stumble, get caught in a web of false repetitions, and come out staggering in a different direction. Rather surprisingly to me, this form built on false starts and repetitions has become an underlying structure in many subsequent pieces. Later works, such as Triple Point (2005), Blues With a Drone (2006), and A Very Wibbly News Flash (2006), owe much of their shape to Six Hours, though they have markedly different moods.
Six Hours in the Isolation Booth has also had a much more tangible influence on my subsequent output. In the months following the composition of Six Hours, I wrote three additional pieces which are compositional "remixes" of Six Hours. First came Interruption (2006), for chamber wind ensemble, which reproduced the original solo in the clarinet part, while the other instruments offer additional depth, shading, or even independent commentary in their accompaniment. Soon after, I wrote Dual Confinement (2006), for clarinet and alto saxophone, which splits the original melody, with some distortion, between the two instruments, and also adds layers of sonic effects which are meant to evoke the sound of electronic music. In both of these compositions, Six Hours serves as a jumping-off point for additional musical explorations.
The third "remix," 6n Hours (2006), is not so much a new composition as a reconception of the original piece. In 6n Hours, multiple clarinets, or one or more live clarinets with a prerecorded CD, all play through Six Hours in the Isolation Booth as written. However, as many of the notes and rests in Six Hours have independent durations, specified by fermatas, each performer gets to make their own decisions about these note-lengths, resulting in an overlapping network of phrases and echoes. If you are performing 6n Hours, please note that that is only the general title for the piece. The title for a specific performance should reflect the number of performers: a performance for two live clarinetists should be billed as 12 Hours, while a performance for four live clarinetists and one prerecorded clarinet should be called 30 Hours. Although the various clarinettists are not expected to play in unison, they should not be completely independent, either; each (live) performer should listen to those around them and make informed musical decisions. While Six Hours in the Isolation Booth is quite sparse to begin with, clarinettists should make sure that the group performance does not get too cluttered. With more performers taking part, the lengths of the rests should increase on average, and if there are more than three performers in total (live and prerecorded), it would be advisable to have only one performer or recording play the entirety of Six Hours, while the other performers may choose to omit individual phrases as they see fit.
In both its solo and ensemble incarnations, Six Hours does not make many technical demands of the player. It does require a good deal of breath control, and the ability to project subtle dynamic nuances. As such, it is an excellent vehicle for intermediate clarinettists to show off their expressive talents. As a matter of fact, I have found that a less advanced clarinettist, such as myself, can perhaps embody the vulnerability of this piece more ably than a seasoned professional. Professional clarinettists should, in turn, take this as an opportunity to prove me wrong. While Six Hours in the Isolation Booth as a piece of music is quite bleak, the title has a much lighter inspiration. It comes from a comic strip by internet humorist Lore Sjöberg. My composition has nothing to do with that strip, but I thought the phrase "six hours in the isolation booth" aptly described the piece's mood. The strip itself is about "the worst music on the planet," and while I hope that that designation will never apply to my compositions, I think that I could come to enjoy the company of squeezebox shredders and piobaireachd hard-boppers.
