William Schuman - Symphony No. 3

Video

William Schuman's 1941 Symphony No. 3 has a great Bass Clarinet part. The passage on most auditions is the fugal entrance near the beginning of the fourth movement: Toccata. Following the snare's initial statement of the theme, I like to think of the bass clarinet entrance as creepy and mysterious. The theme is derived from the first three notes, and I like to highlight them a bit. Diminuendo the first three notes, and crescendo through the next triplets so you can play the next iteration of this cell in the same manner. The dotted-eighth-note/sixteenth-note rhythm should be sharp, contrasting with smoothness for the triplets. At 160, again crescendo through the measure to play the cell with the same inflection. This approach helps the whole theme sound improvised, with is the point of a Toccata. A little more playfulness leads to the only difficult part of this passage, starting at 165. The starting F is the resulting cadence of the G-flat before it. Make that apparent and help establish the run by a tiny accent and stretch on that low F. Big crescendo, and add an accent to the high C to compensate for the high F's tendency to pop out. Don't rush! The final two measures of the solo should be played with diminuendo.

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