Chamber Orchestra - Level 4 - Digital Download

SKU: A0.772375

Composed by Gabriel Faure. Arranged by Amir Awad. Concert,Romantic Period,Standards. Score and parts. 49 pages. Amir Awad #3506351. Published by Amir Awad (A0.772375).

This piece is originally composed by Gabriel Fauré for Flute and piano , and it is arranged for Flute and String Orchestra

This elegant solo has some beautiful melodic lines and is Impressionistic in form and harmony. An excellent teaching piece to emphasize phrasing and musicality, or a great programming choice when a lovely lyrical moment is needed!

This famous work is dedicated to Paul Taffanel, often called the father of the modern French school of the flute. He was a busy man, active at the Opéra de Paris, in the Conservatoire concerts, as the leader of the Orchestre de la Société des Instruments à Vent, and, from 1893, as a professor at the Conservatoire. Fauré was appointed professor of composition there in 1896, and it was almost inevitable that Taffanel should ask him, in the spring of 1898, to write a sight-reading piece (the Morceau de lecture) and a concours composition for the July examinations. Fauré decided to pass the orchestration of his incidental music for Maeterlinck's play Pelléas et Mélisande, on which he had been feverishly working, to his pupil Charles Koechlin, so he could get to grips with the concours piece. The Fantaisie for flute and piano occupied him from the beginning of June until at least mid-July.

The piece opens with an E-minor sicilienne of great charm, but soon gets to a C-major Allegro filled with lightning-fast pyrotechnics. Writing to Koechlin, Fauré complained:

I am drowned in the Taffanel and plunged up to my neck in scales, arpeggios, and staccati! I have already perpetrated 104 bars of this irksome torture

The first performance of the Fantaisie was given by the concours winner, Gaston Blanquart, on July 28, 1898.