The Seven Jarring Dances were composed in response to my then wife Alex Sax’s request that I write some music for the opening of her installation “The Jar Project,” in which sixty artists present small artworks encased in glass jars. The Jar Project opened in February, 2011, and is viewable for two days each month through April. So when I composed this piece, I had already seen the installation, as well as formulated my own ideas about the kind of things that come, or go, as it were, in jars.

I imagined writing something that captured the idea of harvest, of celebration, preservation, sweetness, perhaps with a touch of sour, of crunch. I didn’t really know what I’d write, but I sat down and wrote what was to be the first Dance of my set, a joyous little piece in mixed meters for guitar and clarinet. The guitar is my second instrument (after the drums), but one I love deeply, and the notion of writing for myself on steel-string guitar (an instrument that is not generally featured in chamber repertory, since its cousin the nylon-string guitar is the choice of classical players) was at once appealing and terrifying.

After writing the first piece in a single sitting, I decided to continue writing a piece per day for a week, and wound up with a seven-movement suite. I elected to consider each of the movements “dances,” though they are dances only in the most stylized sense of the word, since they often change meter, are occasionally ametric, and touch only very occasionally on standard dance forms. Still, the notion of a dance of fancy, or a dance of the soul, resonated deeply with me.

Like the jars in the installation, and jars in general, which preserve so much of human experience, the suite seems to me to encompass a kind of life cycle of emotion, perhaps a metaphorical journey through life’s seasons.

Some comments on each of the dances:

I. Joyously: replete with spring festivity and loosely inspired in its rhythmic structure by Monteverdi’s aria “Vi ricordi” from the early opera Orfeo. For clarinet in Bb.

2. Pastoral: In drop D tuning (standard guitar tuning with the low E string tuned down to D), a harbinger of the delving into alternate tuning that defines the latter part of the suite. Another take on spring, which makes extensive use of open strings and guitar resonance. For clarinet in A.

3. Boldly, Bluesy: but a rather sunny blues, truth be told. This dance features the bass clarinet (in Bb), and contains several long, almost bebop-like, melodic lines, presented in unison by the two instruments.

4. Lullaby Waltz: a first twinge of melancholy enters the suite in this movement; it is a pure waltz in a rather romantic guise, with a B section that is shamelessly inspired by Chopin. The backward musical glance is colored by nostalgia, and I think of the memories we have of jarred items prepared by departed love ones, or perhaps those very loved ones themselves, with whom we shared pure joy long ago. For clarinet in A.

5. With Slavic Intensity: an insistent and intense, Eastern European-infused romp for E flat (piccolo) clarinet, in all its obnoxious, vibrant intensity. The guitar is tuned to the common folk tuning of DADGAD, and capo’d up one fret so that Eb is central. From this point on, alternate tunings predominate, inspired in no small part by my love of and writing about Joni Mitchell (the master of alternate guitar tunings). This dance is a burst of renewed energy, a last grasp at youth, or the fading warmth of summer.

6. Lazily, Dreamily; Uncomplicated and fast: The guitar is now tuned to CGCGBD, which gives it a deep, rumbling sort of quality in its bass notes. The feeling here is autumnal, a world of experience has been accrued since the early, verdant celebrations earlier in the suite. A maturity, and sense of contentment reigns throughout, culminating in a joyous (though not too exuberant), uncomplicatedly sweet conclusion. For clarinet in Bb.

7. grandly, passionately, and with extreme liberty and rubato; Ecstatic: This dance recapitulates the first dance, but in a wholly transcendent manner. The guitar is now tuned to the very dissonant and problematic tuning of BGCGBbEb, with its lowest string a marvel of buzzes and clacks, dissonantly grating against the cm7 chord of its upper five neighbors. The piece begins out of time, with pathos, as the clarinet presents an improvisatory, drawn out rendition of the opening melodic line of dance 1. The guitar enters with overwrought and uncontained tremolo. At a climactic early moment, the guitar presents its horrifically discordant all-open chord, with the clarinet emitting an anguished wail above. The guitar than begins the act of transcendence, as the low B string is audibly retuned, up and down, ultimately landing on C, and, after an accelerando, the C minor 7^th chord is suddenly transformed (by means of two stopped strings) to a vibrant C major chord. A great crisis has been overcome. The meter now emerges as an ecstatic 6/8, and the clarinet returns with a soaring rendition of the theme, ever building in intensity. At a climactic moment, the pulsating guitar chords stop, and a resurgence of melancholy occurs, as the key shifts to minor and the clarinet plays a sad version of the continuation of the melody in its low register. The all-open chord returns, accompanying a new line in the clarinet, but ultimately, a solemn and resolved C major (which turns out to be the key of the suite) chord emerges, strummed emphatically five times.

Duration: c. 16 minutes