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Flute Sonata
1990

flute
piano

duration 10' 

first performance:
Christine Fish and Kathleen Supové
Extension Works Composers Series / 1st & 2nd Church, Boston / October 18, 1990

RECORDING—first performance: 


SCORE
Movement 1
Movement 2
Movement 3

PROGRAM NOTE
This work is in three movements. The first movement is a rondo variation. The rondo theme is heard at the start and is marked flowing but 'propelled; dreamily.' It returns seven times, always slightly varied, the penultimate time intercut, measure by measure, with a loud cadential figure drawn from the movement's other main material. This second type of material is also varied throughout, although always heard as a passage of rapid sixteenth notes. The second movement is a simple ballade-like pastorale. The ballade is heard first with a thin, eerie flute descant which becomes a winding melody played over repeated piano chords. The ballade returns; this time breaking down under the accumulated weight of added grace-notes, leading to a slightly faster reprise of the melody, now played by the piano–the flute again playing a slower descant. The movement ends with gentle repeated chords. In the third movement, marked bright and hard, the piano and flute are meshed together–the alternating pitches of the opening suddenly burst out into big handfuls of sound. The movement closes by bringing the instruments back to the repeated major 2nd which, since the second movement, has acted to break the momentum of the music.