Coates: Reaching for the Moon
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Shipping Policy- Composer: Gloria Coates (1938-2023)
- Instrumentation: Flute
- Work: Reaching for the Moon
- ISMN:
Description
In 1987/1988 Gloria Coates wrote a solo for alto recorder in collaboration with the recorder player Dörte Nienstedt. Extreme dynamic increases, simultaneous playing and singing, hard accents, fluttering tonguing, multiphonics, upward glissandi and vibrato go beyond the usual framework of music for recorder and led to the title ‘Breacking through'.
The version for transverse flute was written with Edmund Wächter (premiere 19 October 1988). The main aim was to utilise the greater range of the transverse flute and to transfer the expressive elements. Glissandi and multiphonics in particular demanded new fingerings. As no specific sounds were required for the multiphonics, but the additional notes were to determine the colour and expression of the main tone, there were many possibilities here, which the composer had played for two days in various combinations until she finally found her favoured sounds in this empirical approach. As it was ultimately an independent piece, it was also to be given its own title and after the first performances took place under various names (‘Breaking Through III', ‘Breaking out'), ‘Reaching for the Moon' finally emerged.
Two additional versions with tape were also heard at the premiere: In ‘Fiori', the flute enters into a dialogue with the perking and chattering of the cockatiel of a friend, Princess Maria Josepha of Saxony. and in ‘Fiori and the Princess', the princess also takes an active part in the ‘conversation'. Here it becomes clear that ‘Reaching for the Moon' was also conceived as ‘bird music', for which Gloria Coates received her first inspiration from a cockatoo in a pet shOp.
The opening motif (theme) serves as a formative element, which changes in parts and runs through the entire piece in fragments. A twelve-tone row with a song-like rhythm and a ‘quasi-sex chord' in a wide register at the beginning corresponds to listening habits, from which one is immediately torn away by fluttering tonguing and multiphonics.
This ‘theme' can also be found in other flute pieces by Gloria Coates, as a kind of ‘leitmotif' for flute:
‘Lichtsplitter' for flute, viola and harp (1988)
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additionally with percussion ‘Microtone Poem' (1988)
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additionally with percussion and timpani ‘Transfer 482' (1992)
‘Märchen Suite', from which "Der kleine Däumling" (1987)
‘Phantom' for flute and piano (2004) is a duo version of "Reaching for the Moon" without reprise.
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Coates: Reaching for the Moon
