Finding Equilibrium in Clarinet Chamber Music

Composer Pierre Jalbert discusses his new clarinet quintet ahead of its premiere, given by clarinetist Romie de Guise-Langlois and the Dover Quartet on the Sonic Spectrum concert on April 17, 2025.

Nicky Swett: Do you have a favorite clarinet quintet from the repertoire?  

Pierre Jalbert: I don't think I have a favorite. Both of my sons are actually clarinetists, so I’ve heard a lot of clarinet music. The Mozart and Brahms Quintets have special places in my heart, but so does the broader clarinet rep, which I heard in the house over the course of 15 years or more: the Stravinsky Three Pieces, the Copland Clarinet Concerto, the Corigliano Clarinet Concerto. Both my wife and I are pianists, so we weren't wind players at all. I don't know how that happened with our kids.  

NS: Do you feel like you got a different sense of the instrument's technique and potential because you had both of your sons learning it and studying it and playing it in the house? 

PJ: Absolutely. I'd written for clarinet before in the orchestra and chamber music. But hearing them practicing long tones and leaping up the 12th instead of the octave for the long tone—because of the shape of the instrument, it over-blows to a 12th—hearing the registers, hearing E-flat clarinet when they practiced that in the house, especially in the higher register, that was always a trip. It was definitely in my ear more than some other instruments.  

I don't know necessarily that it was a result of it being in the family, but I've written a lot for the clarinet. I wrote a clarinet sonata for Richie Hawley, who teaches here at the Shepherd School in Houston. I wrote a clarinet trio for CMS of Lincoln Center for David Shifrin. I wrote a clarinet quartet, with the Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time instrumentation [clarinet, violin, cello, and piano]. Romie de Guise-Langlois, the clarinetist who will be playing this premiere, premiered that piece too in Boston a few years ago. Then I have another clarinet quintet, which was written for the Pro Arte Quartet and Charles Neidich. 

I love the instrument and the repertoire for the instrument. Though I must say, and this is not a knock on the clarinet, whenever I pass by a clarinetist practicing, it's always the same five pieces. There is slightly more repertoire than that. But maybe it's the job of composers to increase some of this rep if we can. 

NS: Is there a particular aspect of the instrument that you want to reveal in the pieces that you've written for the clarinet or a gap that you're trying to fill? 

PJ: I wouldn't say it's a gap. I'm just trying to explore the instrument in my own way. To me, the clarinet is really at least three instruments because of changes in timbre when you go from the lowest register, which has its own unique quality, to the mid register, to the upper register. It's all very different. Every piece I write will bring out some aspect of the instrument.  

NS: What are some challenges of writing for a mix of wind and string instruments? 

PJ: The clarinet generally doesn't use vibrato like other instruments do. They can use it for expressive purposes, but in classical music they tend not to use any. The strings use it all the time. I think the clarinet blends well with the quartet, depending on the register, but those are always issues you're thinking about as you develop an ensemble mix. 

NS: You mentioned that you’ve written many pieces of clarinet chamber music. Is there something new about the instrument that you're exploring in this piece? 

PJ: One thing that the clarinet is really good at is niente beginnings and endings—that is, starting a note from nothing, absolutely nothing, or doing a diminuendo to absolutely nothing. The piece starts with the strings entering on this cluster, extremely soft. The clarinet enters as well but you don't even hear it, it just gradually is there. This static, soft chord at the beginning slowly evolves. It blossoms and builds and ascends, and I’m treating the whole ensemble as one unit together. That's a different way of thinking than in some of my other pieces.  

The title, Equilibrium, relates to the time we live in. I'm sure there have been other times like this, but it seems especially true now that the world seems out of balance. Whether you're talking about the natural world, climate issues, or the political issues of the day, everything seems to be drawn to extremes.  

Almost every culture in the world has symbols for equilibrium. There's a bit of that in the music. Especially in the first movement, the form of the piece is trying to achieve an equilibrium between very static, slow music and faster, more rhythmic, energetic music. It goes back and forth three times, and that's a little different than in some of my other pieces. I had to decide how to make that work, without being too obvious or too abrupt. 

There’s another movement in the piece where I use quasi-Gregorian chant. I've used chant in a lot of my music, either quoting directly or using a chant as a basis and making it more contemporary by adding to it. The second movement does some of that. There's a particular moment where the strings are doing this unison chant and the clarinet is commenting on it freely. There's a bit of pitch-bending subtlety. I can't say that's necessarily new, I've used those sorts of things in the past, but that combination is slightly different than what I've done before. 

NS: The last movement is called “Tipping Point,” and seems to represent what happens when equilibrium gets out of balance. What musical features or elements did you use to create a sense of instability? 

PJ: The whole movement is frantic. You're never quite sure if it's going to fall off a cliff. Hopefully it won't, performance-wise! I have these harmonics and pizzicatos doubling each other, higher up and then lower down and then back and forth. The rhythm is asymmetric. It has a certain pattern, but from measure to measure, from moment to moment, it's constantly changing. The players have to fit all that in and it's very hard to align this stuff. It keeps the performers on the edge of their seats, and hopefully it keeps the audience on the edge of their seats too. For years, we've been talking about what the tipping point is for the climate, the point at which there's no going back. Obviously that was on my mind. 

NS: When you were composing this quintet, did you have the playing styles of Romie de Guise-Langlois and the Dover Quartet in mind, or did you write thinking about a more generic clarinet-string sound? 

PJ: When I'm writing works, I definitely think about who I am writing for and what they sound like. I need to know that, and it always helps to have a connection. I've known Romie’s playing since she played a concerto with the Houston Symphony a long time ago. Since then we've worked on several things together. She did the premiere of Street Antiphons with the Boston Chamber Music Society. We also went to Cuba together with a group from the American Composers Forum, where she was playing in another chamber work of mine. There's this purity of tone in her playing and she can blend really, really well with strings.  

I’ve heard the Dover Quartet many times at different festivals and other performances. They're so musically cohesive, so rhythmically tight, and they have this focused intensity to their playing. All of those things between the Dover Quartet and Romie played into how I wrote this piece. When you know somebody’s sound, that becomes what you're hearing when you're writing a piece. You don't always have that luxury as a composer, but it is great when you do. If you're writing a piece based on visual art or a poem or a text of some kind, that helps to generate the music. Knowing these players and what they do and how they sound can help generate the music too.


Cellist, writer, and music researcher Nicky Swett is a PhD Candidate and Gates Scholar at the University of Cambridge. He is a program annotator and editorial contributor for many concert presenters, including Carnegie Hall, the New York Philharmonic, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the BBC, Music@Menlo, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.