Allen Shawn

Flute and Piano

Composer's Note:

In composing this four-movement work I deliberately tried to put aside my usual goal of establishing a unified idiom. Although linked by a  musical motto that recurs in each. the first three movements  employ quite different sound vocabularies. The first movement is a kind of mysterious Bartokian Chaconne, the second is an angular atonal scherzo, and the third is a highly romantic and rather tonal accompanied aria for flute. The fourth movement finale contains aspects of all three of them, and attempts a reconciliation between their idioms. The original piece was composed in 1997 for flutist Beth Anderson, who commissioned it, and gave the premiere in a recital at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. I later considerably revised the work, and made the final changes in January, 2025. It has not yet been performed in this revised version.