Dubles

For solo Flute


Commentary
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Commentary

Although phonetically the same, the title of this work has nothing to do with the usual practice in the 18th century suite, consisting of subjecting one or more dances to a repetition in the form of an ornamental variation called with the French term double (as happens in Suite No. 4 for guitar, by Robert de Visée -where the Courante is followed by the Double de la Courante-, or Partita No. 1 for solo violin, by Johann Sebastian Bach, in which each of the four dances that make it up -Allemande, Corrente, Sarabande and Bourrée- is followed by its corresponding double). Quite the contrary, this piece for solo flute takes its title from the children's game of the same name, a game of skipping rope in which two players act as a pole, passing the string alternately and rapidly over the head and under the feet of a third player, who in turn has to avoid contact with it by crouching or jumping, respectively.
That aspect of the game that places its interest in the highest or lowest part of the central player serves as a pretext for the composition of a virtuosic piece in which the entire discourse takes place in the low and highest registers of the instrument, systematically avoiding the middle register, which is only passed through in a few quick strokes that link the extreme registers.
Dubles opens with a section that gradually goes from the only air effect to the conventional emission of sound, in a continuous chromatic play in the low register from which little by little a melodic germ sprouts in the high register. In this register the second section is basically developed, in which strongly contrasting lyrical and dramatic elements are brought together. A brief recollection of the initial rapid chromatic movements gives way to a new section, characterized by wide ascending and descending arpeggios that are resolved in frequently violent gestures that take the high register to the limit of its expressive possibility. The piece closes with the retrograde of the initial section, thus losing itself in the only air and, finally, in silence.

Dubles was composed in Cuenca in July 1983 for the American flutist Linda Wetherill, who premiered it at the Wijngrachttheater in Kerkrade (Holland), on September 29 of that same year.

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(Score without watermarks available at www.asesores-musicales.com )