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20th century

Baroque

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20th century

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Solo repertoire

Piccolo

Alto flute

Bass flute

Debussy Claude

Aitken, Robert

Amirov, Fikret

Amlin, Martin

Amram, David

Andriessen, Jurriaan

Arnold, Malcolm

Arrieu, Claude

Auric, Georges

Babbit, Milton

Bacchus, Peter

Bacri, Nicolas

Baker, Michael Conway

Baksa, Robert

Barber, Samuel

Barrere, Georges

Bartók, Béla Viktor János

Baton, René-Emmanuel

Beaser, Robert

Bennet, Richard Rodney

Berg, Gunnar

Berio, Luciano

Bernofsky, Lauren

Bernstein, Leonard

Bloch, Ernest

Bolling, Claude

Bon, Maarten

Bonis, Mel

Boughton, Rutland

Boulanger, Marie-Juliette

Boulez, Pierre

Bourdin, Roger

Bournonville, Armand

Bowen, Edwin York

Bozza, Eugène Joseph

Bréville, Pierre

Brings, Allen

Brotons, Salvador

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Brun, Georges

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Büsser, Henri

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Cortese, Luigi

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Dahl, Walter Ingolf Marcus

Damase, Jean-Michel

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Del Tredici, David

DeLaney, Charles Oliver

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Dinicu, Grigoraș

Dodgson, Stephen

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Genzmer, Harald

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"La fille au Cheveux de Lin" for flute and piano

By Debussy Claude

Claude Debussy: "La fille au cheveux de lin" (The Girl with the Flaxen Hair) for flute and piano was written in early 1910, originally as the eighth prelude for piano in Debussy's Préludes, Book I. The whole set was dedicated to his second wife, Emma Bardac.
The composition was premiered by Debussy himself at the Société Musicale Indépendante in Paris on May 25, 1910.
The piece is a musical setting of a poem by Leconte de Lisle from his "Poèmes antiques" (1852). The poem describes a young girl sitting in the heather in the morning sun, singing. Debussy uses a pentatonic-inflected melody and parallel harmonies to evoke the "innocence" and "simplicity" of the girl.
By 1910, Debussy was the most famous living French composer. He was under pressure to follow up on the success of "Images" and the "Children’s Corner". The "Préludes" were his attempt to redefine piano literature through "sensory" titles rather than formal structures. This was the year Debussy began to feel the early symptoms of the colorectal cancer that would eventually take his life. This led to a period of "feverish productivity" as he felt the urgency to document his musical ideas.
While this specific piece wasn't composed for flute, 1910-1913 was the era when Debussy was most fascinated by the flute's timbre that produced Syrinx (1913) and the Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp just a few years later.

János Bálint

Deborah Sipkai (harp), 1998, Capriccio / Naxos

La fille au Cheveux de Lin

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Debussy Claude

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a French composer, often regarded as the first impressionist composer, even though he rejected that association with impressionism.  Debussy studied piano at the Conservatoire de Paris and composition with Ernest Guiraud, gradually developing his own style of composition which matured when he was nearly 40 years old and gained international success with his only opera Pelléas et Mélisande. At the age of 18, he started working as a pianist and tutor in the wealthy Russian household of Nadezhda von Meck, the longtime patroness of P.I.Tchaikovsky. Four years later he won Prix de Rome scholarship and spent two years at Villa Medici in Rome. Even though he was impressed by Wagner’s harmonies he was more influenced by Rimsky-Korsakov’s music which he was exposed upon returning to Paris.

Gradually his compositions gained recognition among his fellow composers. In 1983 Ysaÿe string quartet premiered his String Quartet, and the following year he started to compose Pelléas et Mélisande. In 1984 he gained some recognition with his symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, but his musical efforts were perpetually swept away with his controversial affairs in private life, turning supporters into enemies. Nevertheless, the success of his opera and the following compositions (e.g. La mer; Images) gained wider public recognition abroad than in France. Among his last works: Trio for flute, viola and harp (2015) was written when Debussy was suffering from his fatal illness.