NEWLY-COMMISSIONED WORKS FOR FLUTE AND ORGAN BY FIVE PROMINENT AMERICAN COMPOSERS: AN ANALYSIS AND PERFORMANCE GUIDE

Abstract

In an effort to proliferate the awareness of and interest in flute and organ chamber music, I have commissioned five new works for flute and organ. An analysis and performance guide of these works will provide the basis for the discussion in this monograph. Through a survey of various sources, I hope to prove the need for more flute and organ chamber works as well as introduce the five new pieces into the mainstream repertoire. I begin with a discussion of the organ/flute duo and briefly touch on the small number of existing works widely recognized in both the flute and organ communities. I use several instrument-specific catalogues of repertoire to compare which pieces are common in both the flute and the organ communities as well as how they are catalogued. Using modern scholarship surrounding the rapidly growing performance-studies discipline, I hope to show that a performance guide of these new works can be of great significance to the performers. Once I have established a need for more repertoire for this unique paring, I introduce and discuss at length each individual piece, providing a formal analysis and suggestions to the performer on how best to approach these pieces based on this analysis. I provide an abridged version of the performance guide for each piece as an appendix. Finally, I compare the five new compositions to the existing handful briefly mentioned in the introduction and strive to use the opinions of other professionals in the field to prove not only the validity of the works in themselves, but their viability as upstanding compositions in the mainstream repertoire.