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Ghosts and Gargoyles
Subtitle: Spatial Soliloquies
General Info
Year: 2001
Duration: c. 20:00
Difficulty: (see Ratings for explanation)
Publisher: Carl Fischer
Cost: Score and Parts (print) - Rental | Score Only (print) - $92.75
Movements
1. I – 4:35
2. II – 3:55
3. III – 1:05
4. IV – 2:05
5. V – 2:10
6. VI – 1:00
7. VII – 0:20
8. VIII – 1:40
9. IX – 1:20
10. X – 3:55
Instrumentation
Full Score
Solo C Flute
C Piccolo I-II
Flute I-II
Alto Flute I-II
Bass Flute I-II
Percussion, including:
- Drum Set
Errata
None discovered thus far.
Program Notes
In 1939 Henry Brant composed a flute ensemble piece titled Angels and Devils -- before there were flute ensemble pieces. It is a large work for thirteen flutes and is a classic of the genre and in the canon of modernism.
Brant was one of the 20th century musicians who was as much an innovator in music as a composer. His passion was for exploring how sound came to the listener. As with Giovanni Gabrieli, whose cori spezzati (spaced choirs) exploited the cavernous spaces of St Mark’s in Venice, Brant wanted to exploit the spaces in which music was heard. To do so he would space apart players within venues, creating varied perspectives for the listener.
Brant’s 2001 mini-masterwork, Ghosts and Gargoyles for nine flutes, is the book end to Angels and Devils. In ten short movements, Brant asks his players to be placed about the hall in groups of two. He then has them play as antiphonal ghosts in various styles: jazz and bebop, collages of motives, unison gestures of bells or the blowing of wind.
- Program Note by Charles Peltz for New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble concert program, 27 January 2021
Occasional quotations from ecclesiastic music by Allegri and Palestrina are intended to suggest ghostly intimations. The work is structured in 10 short and uninterrupted movements and has an overall duration of 20 minutes.
- Program Note from WASBE
Media
- Audio: Reference recording. New York Flute Club (Robert Aitken, conductor)
- Audio CD: New York Flute Club (Robert Aitken, conductor) - 2006
State Ratings
None discovered thus far.
Performances
To submit a performance please join The Wind Repertory Project
- New England Conservatory (Boston, Mass.) Wind Ensemble (Charles Peltz, conductor; Stephanie Nozomi Krichena, percussion) - 6 October 2022
- New England Conservatory (Boston, Mass.) Wind Ensemble (Charles Peltz, conductor; Elena Rubin, flute) - 10 February 2021
Works for Winds by This Composer
- American Debate (1976)
- Angels and Devils (1931/1969)
- Festive Eighty (1997)
- Ghosts and Gargoyles (2001)
- Immortal Combat, The (1972)
- Sixty (1973)
- Verticals Ascending (1969)
- Whoopee in D Major (1938/1984/2002)
Resources
- Brant, H. (2001). Ghosts & Gargoyles : Spatial Soliloquies : For Solo Flute with Flute Octet & Jazz Drummer (2001) [score]. Carl Fischer: New York.
- Henry Brant website Accessed 26 January 2021
- Perusal score
- "GHOSTS AND GARGOLYES Spatial Soliloquies for solo flute with flute octet and jazz drummer by Henry Brant (Canada, 1913-2008)." WASBE. Web. (Featured as WASBE’s Composition of the Week 10 April 2023). Accessed 10 April 2023