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Score title
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Euterpe's Caprice
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Composer
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Augusta Read Thomas
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Date
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2008
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Instrumentation
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Flute
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Program note
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Euterpe's Caprice, a two-minute fanfare for solo flute, was composed on a greeting card that the composer sent to Claire at holiday-time in 2008. It was made as a gift for Claire because, as Augusta puts it, "not only is she a world-class flute player and consummate musician, Claire is also one of the nicest and most energetic people on the planet. She is a force of nature."
Although this music is highly notated, precise, carefully structured, thoughtfully proportioned, and so forth... and although the performer is elegantly working from a very specific text, Augusta likes her music to feel spontaneously propelled; as if the audience were witnessing a "captured improvisation." She does this by creating works that encourage the performer to nurture the music's gradual emergence rather than being controlled by it.
While Augusta's compositions are played by hundreds of performers the world over, the works she dedicates to performers are highly personal, and this piece in particular has Claire's lucid, energetic style in its bones.
"I like my music to be played so that the "inner-life" of the different rhythmic syntaxes is specific, with characterized phrasing of the colors and implied harmonies, etc.— keeping it ultra alive — so it sounds spontaneous. For her sublime, precision and technical mastery, I deeply thank Claire for playing my nuanced notations in this way."
— Augusta Read Thomas
Euterpe (pronounced: yoō tərˈ pē) in Greek and Roman mythology was the Muse of flute playing and lyric poetry.
— Whit Bernard
Augusta Read Thomas
