Blood on the Pavement 1984

Blood on the Pavement 1984 is a ten-minute musical composition for clarinet in B-flat (doubling bass clarinet), grand piano, violin, viola, and cello. This thesis will address key concerns regarding the generative pitch materials and numerical constructs that govern the overall form of the piece. First I provide aesthetic context for the work by exploring its influence, primarily the works of Irish-born artist Francis Bacon. This composition is as much an ode to the artist as it is a portrait of myself. Secondly, I describe the pitch, rhythmic and numerical constructs that dictate the gestural and registral aspects of the composition, as well as the symmetries that are built into the tone rows that serve as the armature for the composition. After outlining these major structural, I relate them to the aleatoric timbral trajectories of the composition, and describe how the harmonic and rhythmic cells are mutated and transformed by extended techniques and microtones