Harmony in Blue and Gold

Harmony in Blue and Gold by Eric Ewazen
For 3 C Flutes and Alto Flute (with Flute 1 doubling on Piccolo)
Includes score and parts
Duration: 21:00

A modern American composer, his monumental flute quartet was composed for Femme Flutale, and premiered at the 2008 Mid-Atlantic Flute Fair.  Its four movements were inspired by James McNeill Whistler's “Peacock Room” at the Smithsonian Institution's Freer Gallery–a room full of paintings featuring peacocks, and interior design showcasing blue and white porcelain, an integrated room that Whistler called “Harmony in Blue and Gold.”  Ewazen's ornate textures and impressionist moods express this unique environment through his musical world of sounds and lines.  The four movements are:  “La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine”, Counterpoint of Color, The Artisans and “Fighting Peacocks.”  The first movement is a painting of an elegant, beautiful Chinese princess in traditional garb, and the music reflects her calm demeanor and the Asian-influenced art of the Impressionist composers and Impressionist painters who were so inspired by the arts of the East.  The second movement represents the excitement one feels viewing this room, with its vivid palette of colors of blue and gold, its intricate complexity of the paintings offsetting the elaborate shelves containing detailed white and blue porcelain, and its spectacular gold-coffered ceiling and embossed leather walls.  The third movement relfects the careful craft necessary in creating a beautiful work of art, and the final movement depicts the allegorical painting Whistler painted detailing his very real fued with Frederic Leyland, who commissioned the painting by Whistler. 

I. “La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine”
II. Counterpoint of Color
III. The Artisans
IV. “Fighting Peacocks”