Joan Tower

Flute

Written for Patricia Spencer; edited by Harvey Sollberger. 2021 edition.

Joan Tower has a firmly-established presence in the flute repertoire with her Valentine Trills (also for solo flute) and her Flute Concerto, both dedicated to soloist Carol Wincenc. Hexachords, though equally established in the repertoire, was composed a quarter-century before the Concerto and inhabits a markedly different soundworld.

Stylistically, Tower’s music can be divided into pre-1974 serialism and, post-1974, a loose integration of more traditional musical elements into serialism and other Modern techniques. Though the 1972 Hexachords is strictly dodecaphonic (with a deep, further working-out of twelve-tone procedures as they relate to distinct elements: phrases, vibrato, registration, dynamics, and articulation), it holds hints of the stylistic changes to come.

Various serial techniques are used to distinguish the five sections of the work from each other, creating distinct tonal and pitch-class landscapes roughly adjacent to modulation and key areas in more traditional music. Performance techniques - types of articulation, timbre, and dynamics - allow Tower to paint a second layer of shapes and colors on top of her strictly-realized dodecaphonic canvas, further defining the phrases and musical sections of the work.