DESCRIPTION:
It Hurts in twelve movements for flute, viola, and two double basses by Grant Clarkson. Final score completed January 2015.

Someone asked me to write seven minutes for flute, viola, and two basses for a concert. So instead of writing three movements for seven minutes, I wrote twelve movements for twenty-eight minutes. The concert performance never happened, so I decided to keep all twelve movements as one work.

I set up the structure of the movements according to three feels - 4/4 at 92 bpm, 3/4 at 186 bpm, and 2/4 at 104 bpm. Then I improvised / composed bass one, followed by flute (played through MIDI bass), then viola (also through MIDI), and finally bass two. I sent the recording over to my transcriptionist and then did the final arranging details off the transcription and cleaned it all up in Sibelius.

So what we have here is Sibelius’s audio performance of the written score. This is another first - to be able to have a complete virtual performance of anything one might write. The book is finished and could be put to work for a recording session with a real acoustic quartet someday - when time and money is availed for such a thing.

But listening to this final rendering of the composition it struck me that this material just came out of me, seemingly out of nowhere. It was on spec and on a deadline. And if not put in this final score form, would have likely been put aside and forgotten. But there is enough feeling and coherence for me to feel encouraged to further develop this kind of approach. Even the title came without any time pondering it. It Hurts? What hurts? Well, you tell me!