for amplified clarinet
This piece is dedicated to and was premiered by clarinetist Jacob Wolf as part of his recital Pieces for One on June 12, 2026, at Ford-Crawford Hall, Indiana University.
Duration: 7’30”
Program notes
Trace of a Song is a reflection on cultural erasure, a recurring force throughout the history of my motherland, Russia. Over the past ten centuries, the country has undergone many radical shifts in religion, ideology, and governmental regimes. Among them, religious transformation has perhaps left the deepest scar on the nation’s collective consciousness. The persecution of pagan traditions following the adoption of Christianity, followed centuries later by the suppression of religious practices during the Soviet era, led to the destruction of vast layers of cultural identity.
These transitions were accompanied by the gradual loss of collective memory—the forgetting of songs once sung by our ancestors. Even so-called Russian folk instruments such as the domra and balalaika are, in many ways, loose reimaginings of far more ancient instruments whose original forms and sounds have been lost.
This piece asks a simple question: How much genuine memory do we still carry within us?