- Many Happy Returns (1987) clarinet, violin, piano 12'
- Premiere-1988, by the Yellowstone Chamber Players, Billings, MT.
- Recorded on CRI CD-595. Available through Schubert Club.
Program Notes
The seven brief movements of Many Happy Returns are unified by a frenetic first-movement ritornello, a feature suggested by the ritornelli in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo. In Many Happy Returns, the ritornello is played a total of four times, if one counts the finale. It does not change, though it is abbreviated in repetition, varied in movement V and finally transformed to D major. The remaining movements share no material and their contrast deepens with passing time, as increasingly slower music alternates with quick music. While the work is not programmatic, a curious, skittish mountain goat found its way from my summer campsite at Ousel lake in the Beartooth Mountains of Montana into the third movement waltz.
Many Happy Returns was commissioned by the Eastern Montana College Foundation and the Yellowstone Chamber Players of Billings, MT. It was premiered by that ensemble in Billings in 1988.