When Notre Dame caught fire and burned this spring, I was shocked and deeply moved. The Cathedral’s burning haunts me as a metaphor for our times, literally and metaphorically. Things are incendiary. Things are on fire. Things are burning down around us – three black churches in a span of 10 days in St. Landry, Louisiana between March 29-April 4, 2019; 1,893,913 acres of California land between August-November 2018; The American Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut burned to the ground January, 2019; The Cathedral of Notre Dame, April 15, 2019. It seems we may be in danger of burning our bridges to ourselves and to each other.

BURN, for clarinet quintet, is a musical response to this “burning”.

BURN is a single movement work in several sections. Each section is built on the idea of melody set in a context of tolling bells. To bring stability to this single movement and connection to its sections, I took inspiration from Medieval architecture, using the interval of a perfect 5th in much the same way as flying buttresses of Notre Dame are used. For pitch material, I decided to honor the 10 surviving, named* bells of Notre Dame by using their pitches throughout the piece.

BURN rests on the idea of the flow of time marked by tolling bells and recognized through music which connects us with time and place - two 13th century melodies, the virelais, Cest la fin, and the motet and Flos Filius, from the medieval School of Notre Dame music; a 15th century French melody L’Homme Armé; Thomas Morley’s 16th century madrigal April is in my mistress’ face. Remnants of these melodies rise out of the bells’ intense knelling, burn brightly - and then vanish, leaving the solo clarinet’s humble prayer among the ashes Standing in the need of prayer.

Bells of Notre Dame: Emmanuel – F#2 Marie – G#2 Gabriel – A#2 Anne Geneviéve – B2 Denis – C#3 Marcel – D#3 Étienne – E#3 Benoit-Joseph – F#3 Maurice – G#3 Jean-Marie – A#

--Libby Larsen, 2019