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Protosaurus For Clarinet, Bassoon, Trumpet, Trombone, Violin, Double Bass, & Percussion
Brian Petuch 2015
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Protosaurus!! ! Brian!Petuch,!2015!
! ! ! ! ! Scored!for!Clarinet!in!Bb,!Bassoon,!! Trumpet!in!C,!Trombone,!! Violin,!Double!Bass,!and!Percussion!! ! Commissioned!by!Exceptet! ! ! ! ! Exceptet!is! Sarah!Goldfeather!8!Violin! Pat!Swoboda!8!Bass! Chuck!Furlong!8!Clarinet! David!Nagy!8!Bassoon! Evan!Honse!8!Trumpet! Daniel!Linden!8!Trombone! Mark!Utley!–!Percussion!
! ! Duration:!5!min!!
Special Notation Clarinet
Highest note possible
Flutter-tongue and/or Growl by singing into the clarinet plus glissando. The goal is to make a snarling and dirty sound.
Bassoon
Trumpet
Fall chromatically as quickly as possible
Rip up as quickly as possible. Rip starts before the beat. Try to rip up an octave when possible.
Trombone
Violin
Glissando to the lowest note possible
Highest harmonic possible
Percussion
About the Work Based off of the instrumentation in Stravinsky’s L'Histoire du soldat, Protosaurus is a rowdy, wonky, lumbering work that uses very simple motives to build up to a monstrously large sound. The orchestration of the L'Histoire ensemble has a quirky and sometimes comical wind band type of sound that Protosaurus fully embraces. The “Proto” in Protosaurus came from the idea of using very simple motives, which I thought of as “proto-elements”. The “saurus” part of the title came about due to the work sounding like a large monster, or dinosaur. A Protosaurus is not a real dinosaur. - Brian Petuch