Ice-Nine

On April 29, the Frost Clarinet Choir will be playing my new piece, Ice-Nine.  The title is a reference to the book Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.  In Cat’s Cradle, ice-nine is an alternate crystal structure of H2O which ends up causing the world to freeze over.  In my piece I tried to create a semi narrative structure that chronicles the creation of ice-nine through the time that the world freezes over.  The piece is divided into three sections, the first of which consists of melodic fragments mixed in with bubbling minimalist textures.  I call this section “genesis”  The second section is extremely slow with dissonant clusters fading in and out of the upper voices which eventually accompany an otherworldly contrabass clarinet solo.  This section is titled “Collateral Damage”.  The final section begins with quick fragments in a 12/8 feel weaving in and out of each other which turn into a quirky yet demented melodic figure.  The section finishes out with a juxtaposition of the melody from the first section accompanied by the 12/8 figures at the beginning of the third section finally breaking down and rushing to a somewhat ambiguous finish.  This final section is titled “End Game”.

But enough explanation here’s the pdf of the score and an mp3 rendering which hopefully will be replaced by a live recording in a few weeks.

Ice-Nine.mp3

Ice-Nine.pdf