Hodge-Podge Collage (2025)

for Pierrot Ensemble*

*Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Percussion (optional), Piano

The Pierrot ensemble is a daunting ensemble to write for. Of course there are plenty of musical concerns: with such a disparate collection of instruments (all of which sound completely different from each other), it is difficult, at least when first attempting to write for it, to make the group cohere (As an aside, this is the second time I’ve written for this ensemble; the first attempt has a single bar in the first movement that I like to point to and say, “This is the exact moment that I actually figured out how to write for the Pierrot ensemble.”).

However, there is another less practical and even more intimidating aspect of the ensemble which is more related to legacy and repertoire: this ensemble has been around for little more than a century (peanuts, in a field where ensembles can have more than two centuries of history and repertoire to draw from), and yet it has managed to become the darling of contemporary music ensembles. A countless number of the last century’s most notable composers have made contributions to its repertoire in an inconcievably wide variety of styles. Not to mention its colloquial name, “Pierrot,” which is taken from one of the most celebrated (and controversial) works by one of the most celebrated (and controversial) composers, a piece which, depending on your persuasion, dragged classical music, kicking and screaming, into the twentieth century. What young and ambitious composer wouldn’t want to top that?

This second aspect was what I was grappling with when sitting down to write this piece. In the end I resolved to write something that is itself a commentary on the Pierrot ensemble and its rich history, drawing from a multitude of styles. What emerges is a musical portrait of one of the icons of twentiech- and twenty-first-century music, drenched in modernity and yet at the same time rooted in a century-long tradition.

Duration: 8 minutes
Hodge-Podge Collage was completed in August of 2025. It is dedicated to Brightwork Newmusic.