PROGRAM NOTE

Last modified 6 December 2023

Transfigured Wind I (1984) and IV (1985)
(for solo flute [I], and for solo flute with quadraphonic, computer processed sound [IV])

by Roger Reynolds

I began composing the Transfigured Wind series by writing a four-part solo for flute. It was then recorded by friend and colleague, Harvey Sollberger. All the directed musical intelligence of which he is capable was in play, as well as my composition’s notated pitches, durations, and dynamics. Once digitized, his playing underwent a host of transformations before re-emerging, transfigured, as quadraphonic computer files. Transfigured Wind I, involves no technology, just the four solo movements, but version VI also includes an abbreviated representation from the elaborate computer processed and spatialized materials that became a part of Transfigured Wind II and III. (Refer to the program note for those works for further details.)

An essential core of the Transfigured materials was borrowed from my 1965 flute solo, Ambages, and it is in that work that the expressive character of Transfigured Wind resides. The subsequent, now expanded compositions of the Transfigured series concerns itself with the way in which transformed reoccurrence allows a more subtle and far-reaching parallelism with the flux of our temporal experience as human beings. We anticipate, reflect, recall. We are sometimes absorbed in specifics, at other times adrift in larger, less well-defined worlds of impression.

The Transfigured Wind series is dedicated to my lifelong partner Karen, a flutist whose playing shaped my sense of that instrument’s potential. The premiere of Transfigured Wind IV, commissioned by Robert Aitken, was given by him at Tully Hall, New York, 10 February 1985.

  – Roger Reynolds