Ophelia Paraphrase

for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano (2024)

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Duration: 11 minutes

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Program Note:

Ophelia Paraphrase is an instrumental reworking of Ophelia Floats, my vocal setting of Rimbaud’s poem “Ophélie.” Written for a quartet of clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, the paraphrase distills the music to its core theme and variations on an imagined vocalise sung by Ophelia. The vocalise, like Rimbaud’s Ophelia, exists in a world with the eternal flow of water—his "long black river" is at times cradling, or drifting, or rushing Ophelia to her end. She though is held in stasis, frozen in a moment of serenity, while the double tragedy of lost innocence and lost life swirls around her.

 

The music of Ophelia is influenced by two of my musical loves: mélodie and chamber music of late-19th century and early-20th century France; as well as “emo” and pop-punk music from the late 1990s through the 2000s. Scales and modes from Fauré, Debussy, and Satie are synthesized with textures and chord progressions from bands and artists like Dashboard Confessional, Blink-182, Avril Lavigne, and Something Corporate. Fin-de-siècle France blends with turn-of-the-century America; emo-pop meets belle époque.

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Vocal version Premiere:
Tatiana Gavrilova, soprano; Viktor Puzynia, clarinet;
Marina Romeyko, piano
Phasma New Music Festival, 2025, Lviv, Ukraine
September 7th, 2025

Choral version Premiere:

Inversion Ensemble: Da Capo, Adrienne Pedrotti Bingamon, dir.
Maureen Broy Papovich & Katrina Saporsantos, soprano soloists

Brendan Fairleigh, clarinet; Joseph Choi, piano

Westminster Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas

January 21st, 2023

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