…tomorrow?

Performers: Mauricio Castillo, Bar Natan, Daniel Perzan, Daysha Watts, and Grayson Tamez This piece is dedicated to the Baylor University Clarinet Choir and came from a conversation I had with the head professor Ran Kampel. Ran and I had been discussing Clarinet repertoire when he mentioned my first premiere, Amy's Songs. He asked if I would be willing to go back to that place and write a piece about mental health for Clarinets. The piece was heavily inspired by two works. Wie bist du, Seele, in mir so gar betrübt by J.S. Bach and The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives. As of composing this I had recently begun playing and singing through one Bach chorale a day out of the 371 Harmonized Chorales book. This led me to coming across #242 in the book Wie bist du, Seele which roughly translates to Why art thou, soul, so troubled within me. This chorale and translation immediately spoke to me. The chorale begins and ends the piece. The Unanswered Question came about in a peculiar way. I had been studying it for a Theory project while writing this piece and I noticed similarities in the stories and music of both. Thus I began to think of life’s disturbances as questions. The piece is titled with a question mark for this reason. I came to the title based off of my recent journalings. “Will tomorrow even be any better?” “What will happen tomorrow?” “Will this affect my tomorrow?” I noticed the recurrence of the word tomorrow. To me it was as if my subconscious was bringing these questions to me as a precursor to this piece. Bb Clarinet 2 in this context represents these “Questions and Burdens of Life”. It’s that constant voice that is longing for death that tells you that you’re worthless and a waste. It is the voice in this piece that drives and causes chaos and tension throughout all of the other voices. I found while writing tomorrow that this voice is a constant wave within me. That wave is different day to day but it is a force that constantly comes up and fades away until it ultimately comes back. Allow yourself to be open to the wave in this music. Allow yourself to be able to find hope in tomorrow. (Daniel Perzan 2025)