Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Dialogues for Clarinet and Piano (1961)
David Glazer, clarinet
David Garvey, piano
“Dialogues for Clarinet and Piano” were written in 1961, immediately after a very hectic year of ballet composition—Herbert Ross’ evening-length ‘‘The Dybbuk’’, with Nora Kaye in the leading part, and Martha Graham’s the “Samson Agonistes’’. In both of these scores I had, because of subject matter and milieu, deliberately tried to conjure up the near-Eastern melos I had delved into during my formative years in Jerusalem and some of those near-Eastern sounds and rhythms seem to have lingered on in the “Dialogues.” Perhaps I should explain that during my student days in Jerusalem I not only studied counterpoint à la Taneyev with an old Russian, composition with a disciple of Schoenberg, but also learned to play the Oud (an Arabic predecessor of the Lute) with a gentleman from Baghdad. It was then that I learned to hear quarter-tones (an integral part of near-Eastern musical esthetic), to appreciate the symbolism of scale structure so different from ours, and to accept complex polyrhythms as perfectly normal. I also notated some of my teacher’s improvisations; he could neither read nor write music. While in later years I followed my seemingly natural inclination toward Jazz — I had heard almost none until I was about eighteen — those earlier years did leave some mark on me.
In terms of structure the “Dialogues” are quite simple; they are really one dialogue on several subjects. --Robert Starer
Art by Zoran Šimunović
Dialogues for Clarinet and Piano (1961)
David Glazer, clarinet
David Garvey, piano
“Dialogues for Clarinet and Piano” were written in 1961, immediately after a very hectic year of ballet composition—Herbert Ross’ evening-length ‘‘The Dybbuk’’, with Nora Kaye in the leading part, and Martha Graham’s the “Samson Agonistes’’. In both of these scores I had, because of subject matter and milieu, deliberately tried to conjure up the near-Eastern melos I had delved into during my formative years in Jerusalem and some of those near-Eastern sounds and rhythms seem to have lingered on in the “Dialogues.” Perhaps I should explain that during my student days in Jerusalem I not only studied counterpoint à la Taneyev with an old Russian, composition with a disciple of Schoenberg, but also learned to play the Oud (an Arabic predecessor of the Lute) with a gentleman from Baghdad. It was then that I learned to hear quarter-tones (an integral part of near-Eastern musical esthetic), to appreciate the symbolism of scale structure so different from ours, and to accept complex polyrhythms as perfectly normal. I also notated some of my teacher’s improvisations; he could neither read nor write music. While in later years I followed my seemingly natural inclination toward Jazz — I had heard almost none until I was about eighteen — those earlier years did leave some mark on me.
In terms of structure the “Dialogues” are quite simple; they are really one dialogue on several subjects. --Robert Starer
Art by Zoran Šimunović
