Trio for clarinet, cello and piano forms the first chapter in Martin Schlumpf’s
Book of Proportions. Its main concern is to treat rhythm with maximum variety and diversity while remaining rigorous and logical. The instrumental parts often run almost independently and proceed on different temporal planes, yet without “losing contact” with each other.
A key role is sometimes assigned to the piano. For example (part A), the left and right hands may play in a temporal ratio of 2:3, after which the clarinet and cello each “sit” on one of the voices (hands) and create further subdivisions, leading to initial ratios of 9:4 and 9:8, respectively.
Other sections reveal irregular meters and time signatures, culminating in a section of unisono (part E) in which another level of variation enters the scene, with tempo leaps in ratios of 3:2 / 4:3 / 5:4 / 6:5. When combined with ostinato phrases and offbeat accents, the result is a rhythmic universe in which the temporal events are largely governed by proportional ratios.
In a slightly different context, the same also applies to the piece’s architecture. The large-scale design is conceived on the basis of the Fibonacci series (an approximation of the Golden Section), with a large number of subdivisions and a total duration of 1597 seconds. The proportions of the Golden Section interlock on several levels, creating a labyrinth of initially empty “time boxes” that Schlumpf successively “fills” with rhythmic-metric, melodic, harmonic, conceptual, articulatory, dynamic and spatial ideas, at the same time interweaving different types of analogy or reprise.
Just before its midpoint, the piece begins to approach a passage from the first movement of Brahms’s Clarinet Trio. The music metamorphoses and comes surprisingly close to Brahms (in part C), only to recede with scraps of this bygone tonal language …
Some time around 1970, while studying the clarinet, Schlumpf played in the Brahms Trio at a school forum. Before long he had changed his main instrument to the piano; before then, up to his high-school diploma in 1966, he had devoted himself to the cello. In other words, he composed this piece for “his” instruments. Today he plays different instruments altogether.
Trio for clarinet, cello and piano is dedicated to Schlumpf’s wife Antoinette and anyone who’s got rhythm.