Susanna's Lament

Program Notes

Susanna's Lament is from the 35-minute theater piece for clarinet quartet, percussion, dancers, and storyteller Susanna and the Elders. It is based on the story of the same name from the Apocrypha, an ancient story fraught with current issues: abuse of office, corruption in the courts, women's rights, capital punishment, faith during duress. The piece was composed for the composer's friend and classmate Ann Price Bingham, who was persistent in requesting that I compose a clarinet quartet. It is dedicated to Chuck Anderton of Knoxville, Tennessee, a friend and mentor who first introduced me to this story and who modeled for me many the values I hold today.

The work is modeled loosely on Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat, which the composer has performed under Robert Craft. The use of multiple percussion, the extended percussion solo at the close of the seventh dance, and the closing gesture of that solo, are conscious acknowledgments of L'Histoire.

The Storyteller provides a narrative of the plot while the musicians and dancers express the psychological states of the characters as the drama unfolds. There are eight dances, or tableaus, with the mezzo soprano being included on the sixth dance at the crux of the conflict.

Susanna was begun in the summer of 1977 at an old wooden desk near the front door of the Stone Student Center at the Interlochen National Music Camp. It was premiered in February 1979 at the University of Tennessee by clarinet professors Gary Sperl and William Scarlet, clarinet students John Snyder and Wayne Dorothy, percussion professor F. Michael Combs, and then-graduate voice student Delores Ziegler, with the composer conducting. The composer's good friend, the late Mitch Mundy, was the Storyteller. Incidentally, Mitch's daughter, Michelle, was born a few hours after the performance.