The work was commissioned for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its principal clarinetist Larry Combs by the Institute for American Music.
Having composed his previous work Rapture in an almost entirely consonant manner,[3] Rouse attempted to "reinvent" his composition style in the single-movement Clarinet Concerto.
[1] In the program notes to the concerto, Rouse remarked:My final act of 'reinvention' was, for the first time since my early undergraduate student days, to employ elements of randomness and indeterminacy in the composing of the work.
Calum MacDonald of BBC Music Magazine described the piece as "...mercurially changeable in direction and material, playing irreverent games with the number 12, and with a burlesque embedded pastiche ‘mini-concerto’ whose appearances are determined (shades of John Cage!)
Combs' frantic, squealing attempts to make his clarinet heard are rudely silenced, first by obstreperous brass, later by pounding percussion.