Quartet for Flute

Alas, the painfully slow process of adding performance marks to my existing oeuvre measure by measure ate up nearly three-and-a-half months of my life. OK - hiking several hundred miles along Blue Ridge mountain trails during that same period also helps explain why there's been no new original work from me published since April. Now I am back, however, and all the scores and mp3s of my previous compositions have been updated and at least marginally improved by the migration to Sibelius 8.

Oddly enough, this present little quartet seemed almost unconsciously to follow the pattern established last Spring by Op.64: twelve quick (90- to 150-second) movements of miniature vignettes offering no pretension of extended development whatsoever anywhere. Out of curiosity, I looked back through my catalog to determine exactly how often this primitive intellectual device appears in it; and discovered it otherwise used only in the Serenade Op.9, the Septet Op.23, and the Flute Quintet Op.30 - all of which were chamber works featuring the flute as the lead soprano instrument. Apparently there is something about the flute that automatically discourages me from even thinking in sonata-allegro terms. Go figure.

The tonalities of the twelve movements in this unambitious little work follow the tone row quite slavishly: C-Bb-Gb-Ab-B-Db-D-F-Eb-E-A-G. Precisely like last April's string quartet, there is a distinctly jolly - not to say mindless - cast to most of this work. I would say again that this is not like me; but apparently it is becoming so as I age and mellow. Worse things could happen. ;p