Download the score – Flute
(fixed media track available upon request)
Range: D4 – E5
Program Note
Composed for Katherine Crawford and given its premiere performance at Electronic Music Midwest in 2013. The poetry is by Robert Fanning and is included in the score. Special thanks to the Freesound.org users ethang, laureci, ephemeral-rift, and sandyrb for their sonic contributions and to Laura Patterson whose live performance of my piece All My Dreams are Silent is also used in the background.
“Flute”
Sister, now I can tell you this:
how I’d steal
into your room
days you were gone,
teeter on a chair
to reach the shelf,
pull the black box
down and unlatch it.
I’d stare at the disassembled parts:
each silver tube snug in red
velvet, click of fingered keys
rubbed bronze.
I lacked the adequate prayer
my lips might blow across you,
kneeling over your open casket.
Broken instrument, you are not sister
and you are not song. How
can I lift you now. Even if I knew
what notes to play, I haven’t
the breath to make you music.
text by Robert Fanning
