Tarantula

What better instrument to write a piece called Tarantula for than the fuzzy, dark, and biting tones of a bass clarinet?

Tarantula, as you might have guessed, was inspired in part by the Italian tarantella style, a wild and off-kilter folk dance believed to help treat tarantism caused by the bite of a highly poisonous wolf spider (Lycosa Tarantula). While traditional tarantellas are often written in 6/8 time, I wanted to stretch the use of compound time even further by juggling 7/8, 5/8, and other mixed meters to heighten the sense of hysteria. An “eight-legged” octatonic mode also crawls through the piece, inducing a kind of harmonic delirium, while “twitchy” grace note figures exaggerate the madness and mystery that holds us hostage.

Tarantula was written especially for clarinetist David Gould and premiered in 2019.