Ania jest... / Ania Is…

is a work for solo clarinet composed by Juan Manuel Abras in 2015 and dedicated to Michał Górczyński. The piece is based on concepts found in Górczyński’s Etudes for clarinet and bass clarinet, linked to his notion of “natural multimediality” and inspired by beatboxing techniques and contemporary music literature. Ania Is... uses some of the hundreds of performance techniques created by Górczyński, who states: “Giving the musician information about pitch, articulation, dynamics and rhythm is insufficient. What is needed are hints about movement and sound evolution based on reliable methods ... [and] also on graphic solutions, words and photos. ... [The] original techniques have a mission to ‘speak’ to the audience in a spacious way, that is, placed in space. ... Setting apart the meaning and the sound so they could coexist [in] parallel ... [with] the music and the instrument. ... The meaning resurfaces in musicalizing sound occurrences, which could be referred to as a music utopia.”

Thus, within this framework set by Górczyński, Abras composed a work with a score that combines five different elements: quotations of famous clarinet solo passages (by Verdi and Puccini), emoticons (used to express feelings or mood), spoken texts in Polish (of his own creation and sometimes decomposed into phonemes), Górczyński’s own performance techniques (like “fast structure,” “airplane,” “eating,” “quake,” “delicate,” “old woman,” “sheep,” etc.), groups of notes played with extended and traditional techniques (approximate pitches written in spatial notation), and images indicating body actions (squatting, drinking, etc.). The essence of Ania Is... lies in a young man who struggles between the idealisation of the woman he fell in love with and her possible real behaviour, which he finds frightening.