Table Canon for Two Clarinetists, No. 1

Table Canon for Two Clarinetists, Nº1 (2018) was composed in response to a call for scores by superb Italian clarinetists Guido Arbonelli and Natalia Benedetti. A 'table canon' is a piece of music wherein a single line is rendered a duet by means of each player reading the music in retrograde inversion with respect to the other. This piece is the first of three planned table canons to be composed for these two clarinetists. All three table canons are conceived in transposition, with the treble clef's middle line serving as the fulcrum for canonic inversion. The pieces are drawn from materials generated by a single nine-tone row with its origin in the solemn F♯ minor theme which, in Table Canon Nº1, is heard to return in both original and retrograde-inversion forms amidst the otherwise atonal badinage.