14 research outputs found
Kimmo Hakola\u27s Diamond Street and Loco: A Performance Guide
Full text linkKimmo Hakola (b.1958) has emerged in the past two decades as one of Finland’s leading contemporary composers. His numerous clarinet and bass clarinet works include a clarinet concerto, five chamber works with various instrumentations, a work for solo clarinet, a work for solo bass clarinet, and a work for solo clarinet and pedal bass drum (the clarinetist performs both the clarinet and bass drum parts). While this relatively large output featuring the clarinet family may be a result of Hakola’s personal interests, it may also be the result of a friendship with virtuoso clarinetist Kari Kriikku (b. 1960). This document will be a study of two unaccompanied clarinet works of Hakola with the goal of understanding the compositional language and extended techniques used in his works. This research will help others understand the techniques used in these compositions and why the works of Hakola are valuable additions to the clarinet repertoire.
As has been the case so frequently throughout clarinet history, works are composed for a particular performer, or with a particular performer in mind. The most prominent examples include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1750-1791) and Anton Stadler (1753-1812), Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) and Heinrich Baermann (1784-1847) and Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) and Richard Mühlfeld (1856-1907). In other instances, a composer is simply inspired enough by a singular performance of one musician that he or she is inspired to compose prominently for that instrument or voice from that point forward. Understanding the relationship between Hakola and Kriikku (to whom Hakola dedicated his Clarinet Concerto) will provide insights into Hakola’s writing style for the instrument, including the use of various extended techniques. The works composed by Kimmo Hakola to be included in the performance guide are Diamond Street for
solo clarinet and loco1 for clarinet and pedal bass drum (performed by one player). Only the extended techniques present in these works are to be examined in the performance guide.
My investigation will rely first on the scores to these works and the instructions for the extended techniques that are present therein. Second, personal interviews as well as email communications with composer Kimmo Hakola, clarinetist Kari Kriikku, Finnish clarinetist Harri Mäki (Professor of clarinet at the Sibelius academy as of this writing) and Finnish clarinetist and author Mikko Raasakka (contemporary Finnish music specialist and author of Exploring the Clarinet: A Guide to Clarinet Technique and Finnish Clarinet Music) will provide key, new information. Commercially available recordings of the works, especially those recorded by the performer who commissioned or premiered the work, will be consulted in order to analyze the audible representations of Hakola’s notation. Also included in the research scope will be texts and recorded performances which feature or explain these techniques in works by other composers, including works by Alban Berg and Magnus Lindberg.
The primary outcome of this research will be a performance guide for these works which focuses on the extended techniques used within loco and Diamond Street. These two works are products of a collaboration between Kriikku and Hakola, This collaboration demonstrates the brilliant skill of Kriikku as a performer and illustrates Hakola’ multi-ethnic, multi-style aesthetic. Though not the primary focus of the document, past Finnish composers and their compositions and compositional style for the clarinet will be studied to form a point of reference. This document will provide crucial material for the interpretation of Hakola’s works that can also be used by performers and educators when considering extended techniques in other clarinet works.
It will also bring the clarinet and bass clarinet repertoire of Kimmo Hakola to a more prominent and deserved place amongst twentieth and twenty-first century works for these instruments
