Program Notes

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Composed in 2007, Sonnet #5, was written at the request of Peter Alexander (Alexander Publishing) and is part of a larger project of Solo Compositions written for each major instrument of the Orchestra: Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn in F, Trumpet, Trombone, Tuba, Violin, Viola, Cello and Double Bass. The project consisted of composing music for specific poems chosen by Peter that he felt reflected the character of each instrument.  For the Solo Clarinet, the poem assigned was Sonnet #5 by William Shakespeare.

 

Sonnet #5

by William Shakespeare

Those hours that with gentle work did frame

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell

Will play the tyrants to the very same

And that unfair which fairly doth excel;

For never-resting time leads summer on

To hideous winter and confounds him there,

Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o’er snowed and bareness everywhere.

Then, were not summer’s distillation left

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,

Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:

But flowers distilled though they with winter meet,

Leese but there snow; their substance still lives sweet.