Daniel Goode - Annbling (2014)

Daniel Goode (b. 1936) is a fan of (in his own words) "minimalist thinking and process thinking," the "long form," and "the trance effect that repetition brings about." Comprising solo, chamber, and orchestral works, these four pieces span his career as a composer. The earliest, the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (1959-60), reflects his early interests and influences. Using the harmonically enhanced vocabulary of neoclassicism, the Sonata is a fast-slow-fast, three-movement tour-de-force similar in many ways to "the neoclassic sweetness and pizzazz" of Poulenc's three-movement clarinet sonata composed two years later.

Mr. Goode later learned circular breathing and developed his own approach to minimalism and "process music." Goode's Circular Thoughts (1974) for solo clarinet is among the earliest minimalist scores to be published by a major publisher (Theodore Presser Co.). This twenty-minute guided improvisation is also a process piece with specific scales and suggestions about tempo, articulations, timbre, and dynamics. Representing both the ideas of gradual process and resultant patterns commonly associated with the music of Steve Reich, Circular Thoughts highlights the trance-like quality of relentlessly repeating melodic patterns and cyclic ostinatos.

Ländler Land (1999 2000) is subtitled "a waltz for concert performance and dancing for three cellos and two pianos." Goode started Ländler Land while living briefly in Vienna, and it was influenced by a 1993 film called Latcho Drom about the music of the Roma people. Annbling (2006, rev. 2007), was composed for the Flexible Orchestra, a new concept in orchestral sound designed by Mr. Goode in 2004. Annbling is a trombone-dominated contemplation of Mahler's Seventh Symphony, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, a Sundanese pop song, and the tragedy of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. The piece opens with a re-orchestrated quotation from the beginning of Mahler's Seventh Symphony, and ends with a long, sensuous rendition of a West Javanese popular song, "Tonggeret," which Mr. Goode found on a commercial cassette of dance music while in Java in 1996.


Review:"[The music of Daniel Goode] occupies stylistic territory somewhere in between jazz and new music. Not quite what most people think of in terms of contemporary classical, Goode's music is really pretty unique." --Audiophile Audition