Rhapsodos for clarinet and piano
This piece began by wondering about the origin of the word “rhapsody” and falling down a fantastic rabbit hole of language, history, performance practice and traditions, until I found myself sitting at my piano, surrounded by ancient Greek epic poetry and feeling Odysseus’ boat set sail.

The word rhapsody – which, in composition, means an emotional journey through an unfolding, episodic musical form – originally comes from the Greek word “rhapsodein” which means “to sew songs together.” The rhapsodist (or, in Greek, rhapsodos) was like a singing storyteller, standing with a long staff in front of an eager crowd, and performing memorized snippets of stories from the great epic poets, one after the next, telling long, varied tales of adventure. Some rhapsodists became quite famous, traveling many miles to sing night after night.

The rhapsodists took their rhythm from epic poetry’s dactylic hexameter (strong weak weak, strong weak weak), and, for their melodies, exaggerated the natural accents in the Greek language into a kind of speech-driven music. Their performance practice was surprisingly strict, as they attempted to recreate the legends of bards like Homer, who lived several centuries earlier.

I was curious to explore the musicality in the language, and dove into fragments from Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey. Using research and translations from scholar Rodney Merrill, I gave the poem’s narration to the clarinet, letting the original language suggest both the rhythmic accents and melodic contour (in fact, if you know the poem in Greek you could theoretically sing along). The piano paints the context and emotion of each adventure: the shifting sea, Penelope’s loom, memories of home.

When my own great-grandparents left Greece to come to America, they proudly taught their language to their children, but it died with that next generation. Through studying this poem, unraveling its melodies, twisting and threading it onto the score page, I’ve begun feeling closer to them somehow. The result is certainly unlike anything their ancestors would have heard in the Greek amphitheaters of Epidaurus or Delphi, but it’s fulfilling to me to play a small part in passing the song along, one generation to the next.

Like all epic poems, our performance opens with an invocation to the muse, then the stories begin. You might hear Odysseus dodging arrows, calling back to his dying comrades, the thick glissandi of the lotus eaters, or the shriek of the Cyclops while Odysseus escapes. Whatever the music suggests to you, I hope it takes you on an adventure, and that it might somehow connect you to those who – thousands of years ago – also gathered to hear musical storytellers ‘sew songs together.’

I am grateful to Michael Collins and Michael McHale for premiering – and indeed inspiring – this piece.

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