Inhospitable Sea (2026)

The piece derives its title from Póntos Áxeinos (Πόντος Ἄξεινος), the ancient Greek name for the Black Sea, a reference to its difficult navigation and hostile natives. The piece is driven forward by attacks in 5/8 and 7/8 aksak meters, which are characteristic of the Black Sea region, and the harmonic material of the composition is based on the acoustic spectra of three clarinet multiphonics.

I have selected three multiphonics from the "27 Easy Bb Clarinet Multiphonics" post by the amazing Heather Roche's and extracted first 8 partials from each of them.

First 8 partials of the multiphonic #153 from the list.

Then I have calculated dissonance curves for all pairs of these three multiphonics and also the harmonic spectrum (based on the definition by William A. Sethares), and extracted consonances from the local minima of these curves. This gave me interesting harmonies to work with.

Dissonance curve of multiphonic #153 with itself.

Then I wrote the music "normally", by which I mean, the piece was not composed algorithmically, using various scales and intervals that have an eerie coherence with these clarinet multiphonics.

Conductor: Atay Bağcı

Performers

Beste Keleş – Flute
Fevzi Onur Ustabaş – Clarinet
Cihan Yücel – Piano
İmge Tilif – Violin
Ali Başeğmezler – Viola
Mehmet Gökhan Bağcı – Violoncello