Collidoscope Gavotte (after the poem by Ogden Nash) (clarinet and piano)

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An amusing new look at a Gavotte from a Bach cello suite, based on my unpublished vocal setting of Ogden Nash’s poem (The Bottleneck Gavotte) about a couple who keep colliding in their too small dwelling:

I know a dance a perilous dance a demoniac duet
It’s a ritual now habitual with the older married set
It’s danced in the seven room coop
and ivied ranchstyle cot
it’s that conjugal collidoscope
the Botttleneck gavotte

What celibate pseudoarchitect what very prince of asses
built such complex of bottlenecks and networks of impasses
Now man and wife twixt bed and bath or oven or china shelf
in kitchen door at bureau drawer forever meet themself.

Advance and bump, retreat, repeat, with many a sparkling glance,
It’s eye to eye and rump to thigh
So goes the intricate dance.
She raises the soup above her head
While he props door with knee,
He steps to left and she to right,
And again they’re vis-à-vis

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