"New" Music. Lumix M4/3 14mm
Some new music - for me - just arrived this week. This is a page from the Largo of Johann Sebastian Bach's organ trio sonata, BWV 529. Superimposed is my wonderful yet wild Baroque one-keyed flute.
I bought this flute in 1984, the work of a fantastic maker, Cathy Folkers. She was an accomplished modern flute player who decided to apprentice with the doyen of recorder and Baroque flute makers, Friedrich von Huene, in Boston back in the late '70s. She combined her skill as a maker with those as a player to produce extraordinarily responsive and characterful flutes - players' instruments. I always think of this flute as a wild horse: it offers a wild ride - if you can manage to stay in the saddle. Its voice is sweet, woody, yet powerful and focused, but one has to listen very carefully to the intonation to keep it in tune. Most Baroque flutes offer a much more sedate experience. Years of playing have polished the part of the silver key in contact with my finger, and worn away the black finish, revealing the blonde boxwood beneath.
Alas, Cathy is no longer in the flute-making business, having opted for a more financially secure profession in her later years.
The plan is to transcribe the organ score into a trio sonata for flute, violin and harpsichord continuo. It's been done before but I like to work from a good edition - Urtext it's called - to gain a better sense of the composer's intent.
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