Sowash: 1st movement of “Quintet for Clarinet and Strings”

"The whole time your piece was being performed I kept imagining an earthworm riding a roller coaster."
I studied the face of the lady who said this, looking for a twinkle that would indicate she was joking.  No such twinkle.  She
was in earnest.

What reply can be made to such a remark?  Ought I to have said, "Well, that was precisely what I had
in mind!  You've grasped the hidden meaning!"   I just thanked her and said I was glad she had enjoyed the experience,
though she hadn't actually said as much.

Another concert, another punch-and-cookies reception and another lady said of my music, "I especially liked
the part where the squirrels were playing in the leaves."  ???

I've given programmatic titles to many of my pieces, inviting listeners to contemplate certain extra-musical
images as they listen.  But an earthworm on a roller coaster?  Squirrels at play?

People listen to music in all sorts of ways. Some listen for the acoustics, the intonation, the structure.
 Some listen for insights into the era, the culture out of which the music came.  Some listen for the performers' use of rubato,
vibrato, marcato, staccato, pizzicato, whatchama-cato.  Some produce, write, cast and direct little movies in their minds to go
along with what they are hearing.  There's no wrong way to listen to music. 

What about the musicians who play the music?  I wonder about them.  How do they listen?  What
do they get out of the sounds they are making?

Some superb musicians had just finished recording one of my pieces.  They had rehearsed well and they
played beautifully.  I was very happy with their playing and with the recording session.  I said to the violinist, "You
know that part where you are playing in canon an octave above the clarinet?"  She nodded.  "Well, for me, the
violin in that passage is like a hovering, shimmering angel, like the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove, or some undefinable
thing that is radiant, soaring, ineffable." 

To my surprise, she replied, "Was I too loud?  Did you want more warmth, more vibrato?  What was
wrong?" What was wrong?  I was taken aback.  Golly Ned!  Musicians!

I assured her, "I wasn't talking about the playing.  The playing was fine.  I was just trying to share
what that music means to me." She looked at me blankly, perhaps in search of a twinkle that would indicate I was joking.  For her, my comment
was probably not much different than my lady listeners' remarks about earthworms and squirrels.

Later, I told the recording engineer about this encounter.  Wiser than I, he said, "The musicians have not
yet heard this music.  Not really.  They concentrate entirely on playing it to the best of their
ability.  Later, when it's on a CD and they can pop it into the CD player in the car and listen while they're driving around town,
that's when they'll start to hear this music." 

Today I want to share the first movement of my Quintet for Clarinet and Strings.  It's not 'about'
anything.  It's 'just' music.  If it happens to make you think of earthworms, roller coasters, squirrels, hovering angels, the
Holy Spirit or anything else, that will be perfectly OK with me.  I just hope you enjoy it.