This is an amazing piece of music posted on Futility Closet.

“Paul Wetzger’s 1900 composition “Avant et Retour” is a table canon — it’s designed to be placed on a table between two players so that one reads the score right side up while the other reads it upside down. The two halves produce one contrapuntal composition.”

This is not a musical palindrome, since playing it backwards is not the same as playing it forwards.  But it seems to me to be more complex, since the reverse (upside down) playing has to tonally and rhythmically harmonize with the forward playing.

Futility Closet provided a synthesizer version of the piece.  But I found a clarinet duet that I prefer, not just because I played a clarinet but because the clarinet version articulates slurs and staccatos that more closely follows the score.

See Forward and Back for a PDF.

(Update 9/6/2026)  Both Scores

I realized it might be helpful to make a copy of the rotated version of the score so that both parts could be followed more easily.  Here is the result.