This site is home to Alea Publishing & Recording, specializing in music for the bass clarinet.
We offer a growing catalog of creative, artistic transcriptions and new works for bass clarinet solo & ensemble.
About the Work
Sonata for Bass Clarinet and Piano was commissioned by virtuoso former Houston Symphony clarinetist Richard Nunemaker, and takes full advantage of his prodigious technique and the instrument's extraordinary range. Although the sonata is traditional in its structure - with three movements whose tempi are ordered as fast, slow, fast - it is highly original in its musical content.
The first movement draws upon two rather disparate sources for its material - Dizzy Gillespie's bebop standard "Salt Peanut", and Frank Zappa's art-rock masterpiece "Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbeque", hence the title, Salt Peanut Memorial Barbeque. The second movement uses a technique much, much older, that of the isorhythmic motet. The piano accompaniment has a talea of five rhythmic events serving a color of four pitch events. The clarinet cantillates a monody against this that is comprised primarily of the pitches not displayed in the accompaniment; hence the title Motet - Ancient Incantations. The third movement is a bebob and boogie-woogie tour-de-force for the two instruments, at once paying homage to Eric Dolphy and to one of the great songs of his era, "Green Dolphin Street", and hence the title, Green Dolphy Street Boogie.
This publication appears in the following syllabi/prescribed music lists:
Extended-range instrument required for bass clarinet part. Piano score: 30 pages, spiral bound; Bass Clarinet part: 12 pages, staple bound.
About the Composer
American composer Arthur Gottschalk was born in California, but raised in the Northeastern United States. He attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, receiving a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Composition, a Master of Arts degree in Music Composition and English Literature, and his Doctorate in Music Composition, studying with William Bolcom, Ross Lee Finney, and Leslie Bassett. He is currently a Professor at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, where he is Chair of the Department of Music Theory and Composition, and where he directed the university's electronic and computer music laboratories until 2002.
In 1986 he co-founded Modern Music Ventures, Inc., a company which held a recording studio complex, a record production division, four publishing firms, and an artist management division, and for whom he produced records for PolyGram and Capitol. In 1998 Gottschalk abandoned these pursuits, in order that he might devote himself more fully to music composition. Gottschalk's teaching specialties include music business and law, film music, music theory, music composition, and counterpoint. As a film and television composer he numbers six feature films, twelve television scores, and numerous industrial films and commercials among his credits.
Among other awards, he is a recipient of the Charles Ives Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, annual ASCAP Awards since 1980, and has been a Composer-in-Residence at the famed Columbia/Princeton Electronic Music Center and for the Piccolo Spoleto Festival. He has been recently honored with Special Recognition by the ASCAP Rudolph Nissim Awards, the First Prize of the Concorso Internazionale di Composizione Originale - Corciano, Italy, and with the First Prize of the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra composition competition. With well over one hundred compositions in his catalog, his music is performed regularly in Europe, Asia, and Australia, is recorded on New Ariel, Crystal, Summit, Capstone, Beauport Classical, ERMMedia, Golden Crest, and AURecordings, and is published by Subito Music, Shawnee Press, European American Music Distributors, and Spectrum Press (ASCAP). His book, Functional Hearing, is published by Scarecrow Press.
Listen!
Kim Davenport
President
Duo Alea, the father-daughter duo of Michael and Kimberly Davenport, began performing music for bass clarinet and piano in 1996. As performers searching for new repertoire and teachers working with students eager to develop as performers, it quickly became clear that there was a need for more repertoire featuring the bass clarinet. Filling this need became the mission of Alea Publishing & Recording.
Since our first publication in 1997, the Alea catalog has now grown to include over 300 titles. We pride ourselves on the accuracy and quality of our sheet music, as well as our ability to ship directly to customers around the world.
We are proud of the diversity of our catalog in terms of the inclusion of works by composers and arrangers from around the world. We are interested in continuing to expand this diversity, representing musical ideas from around the world.
Following Michael's passing in 2019, Kim has taken over solo management of Alea Publishing. In 2020, Alea established the Dolphy Prize, an annual composition award for new works for bass clarinet by black composers.
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