Euterpe's Caprice (2008)
Two-minute fanfare for solo flute
This tiny work was made as a holiday gift for flutist Claire Chase
First performance: Katherine Borst Jones, flute, at the 2010 Festival of New Music, Ohio State University, 9 April 2010
Duration: 2 minutes
Program Note by the Composer
Euterpe (pronounced: yoō tərˈ pē) in Greek and Roman mythology was the Muse of flute playing and lyric poetry.
Euterpe's Caprice, a two-minute fanfare for solo flute, was composed on a tiny greeting card that I sent to Claire Chase at holiday-time in 2008. It was made as a gift for Claire because, not only is she a world-class flute player and consummate musician, Claire is also one of the nicest and most energetic people on the planet. Claire Chase is a force of nature.
Although this music is highly notated, precise, carefully structured, thoughtfully proportioned, and so forth...and although you have a musician elegantly working from the very specific text, Augusta likes her music to have the feeling that it is organically being self-propelled — on the spot. As if we listeners, the audience, are overhearing a "captured improvisation."
"I like my music to be played so that the "inner-life" of the different rhythmic syntaxes is specific, with characterized phrasing of the colors and harmonies, etc. — keeping it ultra alive — such that it always sounds spontaneous. For the sublime precision and technical mastery, I deeply thank the flute player who is playing my notations in this way."
The world premiere performance was given by Katherine Borst Jones, flute at the 2010 Festival of New Music, Ohio State University, 9 April 2010.
Augusta Read Thomas
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