Sarabande / Pavane

With the current flute quartet versions of Debussy's "SARABANDE" »SARABANDE« (Pour le piano, 1894/1901) and Ravels »PAVANE pour une ínfante défunte« (1899), SYRINX-publishing house continues its series of pedagogically intended ensemble arrangements, whereby in this adaptation of impressionistic piano works the tonal-harmonic aspect and the agogic variance are of primary importance.

In painting, Impressionism is initially characterised by the momentary capture of a mood or a characteristic moment, whereby the respective contours lose their sharpness of outline, the lines dissolve and become indistinct in the haze, so, accordingly, in Impressionist music, the atmospherically indeterminate, the ungraspable, the colourful-tonal, in short - the sfumato - becomes the principle. And so musical impressionism is music of timbres, which juxtaposes sounds "picturesquely" and likewise - more or less often - disguises the beat emphases through rhythmic indeterminacies.

This "colourfulness" of the playing, which is demanded of each of the four performing flutists, combined with a - sometimes individual, sometimes common - shaping of the tempo in all parts, can be practiced here in a purposeful way. The aim is to encourage a play of timbres on the flute and also to encourage freedom in musical performance.

Both flute adaptations go back to orchestral versions that Maurice Ravel made afterwards: in 1910 he orchestrated his "PAVANE" for small orchestra, followed by Debussy's "SARABANDE" in 1922. In order to be able to retain the original keys in the arrangements, the use of a B-foot (Debussy: 4th part / Ravel: all parts) was not avoidable.

Special thanks go to my former fellow student, the composer, pianist and conductor Franck Adrian Holzkamp, who has most graciously taken on the task of reviewing and, where necessary, correcting these arrangements. (Dr. Ruediger Josef Herrmann Pullach i. Isartal, June 2023)