Ad Hoc (2023) by Miguel Chuaqui
for clarinet and viola
World premiere; Earplay commission

Ad Hoc is dedicated to my teacher Andrew Imbrie, and it takes its title from something I remember him saying in lessons whenever my composition processes seemed to become too methodical and constrained: "I sure hope that whatever system you're using, you're using it on an 'ad hoc' basis, Miguel"—because, when it came to writing music, Mr. Imbrie was all about freedom and letting oneself be unencumbered by dogma. He rarely showed an interest in the question of how a student came up with material or where a student's "pitches came from," no matter how cleverly derived the student might have thought they were. Almost all of his advice in composition lessons was indeed ad hoc, "in the moment," focused on what was on the page and on how the passage sounded in the context of what came before it and after it. So, in this piece the clarinet—the teacher—begins by patiently "listening" to the viola, which seems to be "stuck," and very gently coaxing it towards freer and more expressive musical gestures, like the wonderful teacher Mr. Imbrie was.