Imagine you’re at a social gathering: a party or an informal meeting. You are likely to participate in a number of conversations and to overhear many more besides. The music of Monologues represents three kinds of such social conversations. The focus is on statements overheard in such settings rather than portraying an atmosphere of conversations.

A Desultory monologue is marked by a disconnected jumping or passing from one thing to another, especially things not connected with the main subject. In the music, the use of twelve-tone rows seems to lend itself naturally to this kind of disconnected expression.

The term Epigrammatic might be applied to monologues in which the speaker uses few words to make important observations or statements. The clarinet’s motives thus seem to be interrupted by the figures in the piano which are the result of the completion of twelve-tone rows.

Despite proverbial cautions against the practice, it is nearly impossible to be a part of social conversation that does not lead at some point to verbal attacks or haranguing against individuals, entities, or ideologies in politics, a Philippic. The music of the final movement of Monologues includes frequent changes of both regular and irregular meters, repetitions of musical motives and figures; the use of Rondo form reflects a speaker’s driving home one principal subject.