Supplement [2004, rev. 2007]

for bass clarinet

duration :: 11’

Written for Gareth Davis

First performance :: Gareth Davis — Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL, 15 October 2006

[ Richard Haynes :: Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, 22 November 2010 ]

Supplement takes its title and genesis from the psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan’s exploration (in a wholly different context) of the distinction between the relations of “supplementarity” and “complementarity.”  In concrete terms, the piece is a study in layered ornamentation, in concentric encrustations of material and of performative states that more often than not conspire to overwhelm and irretrievably distort that which is ornamented.  There is too much material, too much reaction to and too much enthusiasm for that material; a basic melodic line is “supplemented” beyond recognition and beyond the capacity of a monophonic instrument to control it.