Novellette No. 8 For Flute : Epigraph for Flute - Birdsong at Sunset for Piccolo

Joyance - for Saint Julius Hydrophilos for picco : for Saint Julius Hydrophilos for piccolo-flute, harp and string trio

In this piece the musicians have not only instrumental but also acting roles. They have to walk about the performing area in accordance with a specific plan, while uttering words and sentences taken from James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake. The theoretical background to this use of the text is provided by the general container-function theory developed by the British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion. This theory also determines all the parameters of the music as well. Assistance in working out the harp part was provided by harpist Sarah O?Brian, who was the soloist at the premi?re of the work in Germany in 1999.

Windsequenzen

In 1970 Péter Eötvös spent half a year in Japan where he performed as a member of Karlheinz Stockhausen's ensemble in the German pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka. The encounter with Japanese culture, specifically with Zen Buddhism, had a great effect on him. The fundamental idea of The Sequences of the Wind is one of Zen's complementary contrasts: stillness in movement - movement in stillness. It was inspired by the Japanese landscape and Japanese gardens (the rain, the wind, the sound of stones and the rustle of bamboo cane). This is the third version of the work and was published to mark the 60th birthday of Péter Eötvös. (The composer withdrew the first two versionswritten in 1975 and 1989.) Several elements of modern flute playing appear in the work, which has eight movements at present. The soloist alternately plays four different instruments (a flute of normal tone, a flute that is tuned a quarter tone lower, an alto flute tuned a quarter tone lower and a piccolo).