An Idyll for the Misbegotten (Flute and Percussion)

An Idyll for the Misbegotten (Amplified Flute and 3 Percussionists) (1985) By George Crumb, Published by Edition Peters.

Amplified Flute and 3 Percussionists (score only – four are needed for performance)

“A somewhat more human-centered view of nature is evident in the nine-minuteAn Idyll for the Misbegottenfor amplified flute and percussion, composed in 1985. Once again, the theatrical element is paramount. Crumb suggests, “impractically,” that the music be “heard from afar, over a lake, on a moonlit evening in August.” The scoring, employing two of man’s oldest instruments, conjures up a primitive, timeless aura; there is a brief quotation from Debussy’sSyrinx, interpolated into a passage for the flute that also calls for the performer to speak a few lines by the eighth-century Chinese poet Su-K’ung Shu, while still playing the instrument (“The moon goes down. There are shivering birds and withering grasses.”). -Zizi Mueller