Oberlin

Many students at Oberlin are double majors, but only a handful of them straddle the related but quite different worlds of performance and composition. One of those students is senior Theo Chandler, 21, from Hillsborough, North Carolina. Chandler walked onto campus as just a clarinetist harboring an interest in composition, but he has pursued that interest more and more, first declaring it as a minor, then as a second major, and now planning to apply to graduate schools for it. Rolling around in his roll-y chair on the second floor of the Conservatory Library, Chandler talked about composition and clarinet as well as how he has combined them.

Chandler will play one of his own pieces, a self-described "cute" chamber piece for two clarinets and string trio, on his upcoming senior clarinet recital, December 8th in Kulas Recital Hall. This follows up on a recent trend of performing his own works. His junior recital saw the premiere of his étude for solo clarinet, which was a crowd favorite, full of extended techniques like multiphonics, slap tonguing, pitch bends, and microtonal fingerings. Also, those in the audience for the finals of this year's Oberlin Concerto Competition got a chance to hear cuts from the clarinet-and-piano reduction of his own neo-Romantic concerto.

Chandler has found that performing his own compositions is very different from performing the works of others. "It feels a lot more secure," he said, "like I completely understand why every little thing is included in the piece."

For double-major students, choosing just one of their interests to pursue after undergrad can be stressful, but Chandler is happy about his decision. "It's nice with composition to be able to see all the time you've spent on something turn into an actual product rather than just the possibility of a disaster happening in a performance," he said. "Also, with composition you don't have to worry about day-to-day consistency like you do for performance, especially on an instrument that uses reeds." But he also feels that choosing composition has made playing clarinet more enjoyable. "I feel less nervous about performing. Each and every concert doesn't seem so significant."

There can also be a worry that others--peers, teachers, family--will react negatively to a decision like choosing one field over another, but Chandler hasn't noticed much change. "The other clarinetists treat me the same. I think most of the comp. majors still think I'm a comp. minor or think of me as a clarinet player first." Clarinet teacher Richard Hawkins was also very relaxed about the decision. "I think he said, 'Oh ok,'" said Chandler. "My mom was probably more worried about it than I expected. I think I've convinced her now that it was the better way to go." 

Besides preparing for his clarinet recital, Chandler has many current composition projects on his plate as well as future ones in mind. "Recently I've been enjoying writing in a sort of 20th century French style. I'm working on a piece like that for [student reed trio] Third Rail. I'm also taking Tech 201, Computer Music, which has totally changed the way I hear contemporary music and has given me a lot of ideas." One of those ideas is an electronic piece in which all the recorded sounds are of Chandler playing the clarinet, some of them altered by the computer to add variety and grant the piece an ensemble feel like that of chamber music.        

Chandler rolled around excitedly as he talked about his plans for the piece. "It would play a lot on the idea that certain effects on an acoustic instrument have a very different timbral quality than effects created electronically. For example, a clarinet crescendo sounds much different from the effect of increasing the volume on a computer. I might have sections in which there are four voices, some of which crescendo acoustically, others electronically. I think together the effects will create a much richer sound world than simply one or the other."