Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In
I don’t know what good it is.
In incorporating the bass clarinet and bassoon into the Rahsaan Roland Kirk Fantasia, sometimes I added material, sometimes I redistributed what was already there. The redistribution wasn’t any matter of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, but rather of enjoying the expanded color palette. The changes fell into the following categories: In a couple of points of imitation, adding new entrances for the new instruments, at times in augmented rhythm. In a chorale or two, adding the two new voices. Adding, as noted yesterday, a bass clarinet/bassoon soli to the “trading solos” section. Most especially, though, in the spirit of adding the new colors as contrast without necessarily “bulking up” this or that passage, in places where I had essentially cannibalized the Opus 198 Second Fantasia for recorders, snipping entrances from higher voices, and swapping them into the lower. The last category: as occasionally I did with the similar expansion of Dark Side of the Sun, letting the bassoon double the double-bass, in the manner of basso continuo. Overall, the exercise has put me in mind of a compliment paid me by a parishioner at the Cathedral Church of St Paul when I served as Interim Choir Director. On Easter Sunday, we brought back two trombonists who had collaborated with us for my Evening Service in D during Lent. Since we had them assisting in the Service already, I had them double the tenors and basses for the Hallelujah Chorus, which we were singing for a Postlude, if I recall aright. “That was symphonic,” the parishioner enthused. My present point being that adding two instruments augments the whole to a greater degree than the mere number two might seem to suggest.
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