A PRAYER is a short work written in honor of the seventy-fifth birthday of the late Paul Fromm, the great Chicago-based patron of 20th century music, as part of a “bouquet of compositions” especially composed for the occasion and presented in a concert commemorating the event on January 22, 1982, by the Contemporary Chamber Players of the University of Chicago, Ralph Shapey, music director.
The title STREAM encapsulates some of the essential characteristics of this 16-minute long composition for clarinet and string quartet: it suggests flow—whether gentle or forceful; it implies a journey, one that could take us onto unexpected terrains yet is always moving forward; embedded into this word is also the idea of “stream of consciousness,” and with it, free association and unexpected twists of fancy.
A due for violin and cello, a single-movement piece of approximately 12 minutes, is comprised of what may be seen as a series of interconnected ‘terms of engagement’ between its two protagonists. Starting from a state of separation and great distance, expressed by the two instruments playing entirely different music and placed in registral positions that are wide apart, the two gradually come together, in a manner that is more akin to a series of progressive waves than a straight narrative.