Must I? (2026)

Program notes:

The title arises from a minimal fracture: Mustang I, the name of the amplifier, splits and becomes a question. Must I? An obligation, a command, perhaps a resistance. The question does not concern the gesture alone, but the responsibility of the sound itself.

The clarinet is augmented through a PVC tube attached to the instrument and through amplification: not a simple enlargement of the sound, but a transformation of its materiality and acoustic behavior. The tube prolongs and diverts the breath, modifying its pressure and projection, introducing friction, opaque resonances, and instability; the amplifier intervenes as a device of control, or sabotage, altering dynamics, density, and spatial perception. The sound is no longer a stable given, but a field of forces continuously redefined.

The timbral identity of the instrument becomes ambiguous. The piece explores this tension: who determines the sound?

Who possesses it? Does amplification reinforce or alter? Must I? remains a suspended question, between identity and constraint, between human gesture and machine.