Seldom do composers write their opuses for a particular musician or singer, and if it happens, it means a lot. Honestly, I’m not aware of many such cases – Fyodor Chaliapin comes to mind and I can assume that if there had been many composers of vocal music in the seventies and eighties, they perhaps would make a good use of Freddie Mercury’s four octave range (given the agreement of the latter, of course).
On this subject – of pieces written specially for a certain performer, – Heinrich Baermann had had many such, receieved from Carl Maria von Weber, Felix Mendelssohn, and others. Baermann was a German clarinet virtuoso and, interestingly, a composer himself. Among his own works my favorite is Adagio for Clarinet and String Quintet, Op.23 – a sincere and profoundly melancholic slow-tempo piece. Download it here: Adagio for Clarinet and String Quintet.
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