Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach followed in the footsteps of his father Johann Sebastian in that he wrote effectively and prolifically for the flute. But in other respects he broke with his father, as sons often do, becoming a modernist fond of disrupting traditional norms. He embraced the aesthetic of the empfindsamer Stil or sensible style – "sensible" in this case meaning perceptible to the mind – which sought to convey emotion as directly as possible to the mind of the listener through such compositional devices as sudden interruptions, interjections, and excursions to remote keys.

   John Heiss, flutist, composer, and long-time faculty member of New England Conservatory, describes studying in New York City in the early 1960’s, when the twelve-tone system was enjoying its heyday in academe, and when "harsh and aggressive" was the way to go. But John is the last person anyone would describe as harsh and aggressive, and he sought a more flexible and lyrical use of the twelve tones. He composed "Lento rubato" as a stand-alone movement; when Darius Milhaud heard it, he said, "This is the middle of something." John agreed, and added three more movements. The resulting suite has since become standard repertoire for the flute.

    Jean-Marie Leclair, founder of the French violin school, composed eight of his many violin sonatas to be playable also on the flute – perhaps with additional sales in mind. In the preface to his fourth book of sonatas he encourages the performers – in contrast to CPE Bach – toward a pure and simple style, specifying that the ornamentation that so often "disfigures" slow movements be avoided, and denouncing changes of tempo within a movement. From a distance of 250 years it may come as a surprise that Leclair was enough of an innovator that a certain contemporary commentator described his music as "a kind of algebra capable of rebuffing the most courageous musicians."

   The German composer Karl Marx (no relation) is best known for his vocal works, with numerous choral and solo works to his credit. He also wrote orchestral and chamber works, including our Trio for flute, cello and piano. The brief first movement of the Trio is composed in a floridly expressionist style reminiscent of the tonal Schoenberg, or the Strauss of Salome and Elektra. The second movement, by contrast, is a mercurial scherzo that slithers by, sempre piano, punctuated occasionally by sudden accents from the piano. With the third movement the expressionist chromaticism returns, twice interrupted by episodes of driving motor rhythms, and followed by a quiet, somewhat unsettled coda.

   Morton Feldman was an American original. His artistic influences included the New York abstract-expressionist painters of the early 1950’s, and that other American original, John Cage. He soon became known as a composer of extremely quiet, meticulously notated scores, often with timings not in minutes but in hours. By contrast, his 1972 Flute Trio [the date on the program is incorrect] is very short, coming in under five minutes. The dynamics are pppp throughout, with a few tiny crescendos around the midpoint. Feldman cites artist Robert Rauschenberg’s discovery that he wanted "neither life nor art, but something in between."

   Philippe Gaubert was strongly influenced by Fauré, and his second Sonata shows Fauré’s influence more clearly than any of his other works for the flute. An imaginative commentator once likened the progress of Fauré’s music to the sliding of a colorful scarf smoothly out of a tube – the surface is uneventful, but the emerging, shifting colors are beguiling. With its pastoral style, simple formal layout, and long melodic lines, this Sonata is decidedly more Apollonian than Dionysian. The first movement, and the middle section of the second movement, are characterized by rippling passagework and mercurially shifting harmonies below a smooth surface – the slowly sliding scarf.

Fenwick Smith