Op. 43 – Bomb-Headed Prophet

This clarinet trio was inspired by the controversial Danish political cartoons which caused much consternation in the Arab world at the beginning of 2006, most notably Kurt Westergaard's depiction of the Prophet with a bomb for a turban. From this visual image, I derived two musical images: an artificial scale laden with augmented seconds, a characteristic interval in middle-eastern music, and a rhythmic ticking figure, suggestive of a time bomb.

These two ideas are juxtaposed and interwoven throughout the piece. As with much of my recent music, the harmonic material is drawn exclusively from the 5-29 set. The clarinet writing is of a high level of difficulty.