20th century
Baroque
Classical
Romantic
20th century
21st century
Solo repertoire
Piccolo
Alto flute
Bass flute
Holliger Heinz
Aitken, Robert
Amirov, Fikret
Amlin, Martin
Amram, David
Andriessen, Jurriaan
Arnold, Malcolm
Arrieu, Claude
Auric, Georges
Babbit, Milton
Bacchus, Peter
Bacri, Nicolas
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Petit Air for flute solo
Petit Air for flute solo
Heinz Holliger: Petit Air for flute solo was written in 1991. It was premiered on May 26, 1992, in Zurich, Switzerland, by the Swiss flutist Felix Renggli, a former student and frequent collaborator of Holliger. The piece is dedicated to Aurèle Nicolet on the occasion of his 65th birthday.
The title "Petit Air" (Little Air) is a deceptively simple reference to the Baroque "Air" (a melodic movement). However, in Holliger’s aesthetic, "Air" always carries a double meaning: the musical form and the literal physical breath required to sustain life and sound.
In 1991, Holliger was deeply immersed in his "Scardanelli" cycle and his obsession with the poet Friedrich Hölderlin. By 1991, Holliger's style was moving toward a "fragile" modernism. Unlike the violent outbursts in (é)cri(t) (1987), Petit Air focuses on micro-fluctuations of tone and quiet intensity. At the same time, this piece was inspired by the poem "Petit Air" by Stéphane Mallarmé. Holliger often uses Mallarmé’s "symbolist" approach, where the white space on the page (silence) is as important as the ink (notes).
In the complex world of Heinz Holliger, these two influences are not contradictory but rather parallel mirrors of the same obsession: the "fragment." Both Hölderlin and Mallarmé represented a "crisis of language" for Holliger. Hölderlin (the German poet) provided the psychological context: his "Scardanelli" poems were written in mental isolation, characterized by short, stuttering, and broken phrases. Mallarmé (the French poet) provided the structural model: his Petit Air poems are masterpieces of "subtraction," where the meaning is found in the white space (silence) between words.
So, while 1991 was the "Hölderlin Year" for Holliger (culminating in his massive Scardanelli-Zyklus), he used the flute as a vehicle for his French sensibilities.
Holliger Heinz
Heinz Holliger (1939) is a Swiss oboist and composer. His work is characterized by a relentless exploration of the physical limits of instruments and a deep fascination with literature and mental states.
Born in Langenthal, Switzerland, he grew up in a culturally rich environment. His father was a doctor and an amateur musician, providing an early foundation for his dual interests in the "physicality" of the human body and the art of sound.
He began playing the recorder at age six and the piano at age ten. However, it was his transition to the oboe at age eleven that defined his career. He studied at the Bern Conservatory while still a teenager, showing equal aptitude for performance and theory.
In the late 1950s, he moved to Paris to study oboe with Pierre Pierlot and piano with Yvonne Lefébure. More significantly, he studied composition with Pierre Boulez, a central figure of the musical avant-garde, who deeply influenced Holliger's rigorous approach to structure. Holliger is credited with expanding the technical vocabulary of the oboe more than any other 20th-century performer. He pioneered the use of multiphonics, glissandi, and circular breathing.
His compositions often push other instruments, such as the flute in (é)cri(t), to similar extremes. His style is frequently linked to "linguistic music," where musical gestures mimic the phonetics of speech or the "cries" of human emotion.
A significant portion of his output is inspired by "outsider" literary figures, most notably Samuel Beckett, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Robert Walser. His opera Schneewittchen (Snow White) is a prime example of his dark, psychological aesthetic.