UP TO 50% off Christmas Choral Multi-Copy Purchases Ask the CE team
UP TO 50% off Choral Multi-Copy Purchases Ask the CE team for more info

music for magpies

for solo flute

Emily Doolittle

🔍 Preview Score  music for magpies
Logged-in user discounts applied
Log in to get discounts (now or at checkout)

£6.99£9.99

for solo flute

£9.99
£6.99
Ask about this work
Composer Emily Doolittle
Year of Composition 2003
Duration ca.8'
Categories (all composers) ,
Catalogue ID ce-ed1mfm1

Notes

Music for Magpies was commissioned by Karin Preslmayr for viola da gamba with quarter-tone frets, and was subsequently transcribed for flute at the request of Cliff Dunn. The first movement is a direct transcription of the song of the Pied Butcherbird, an Australian bird with a sense of musical pitch and structure remarkably similar to humans. The second movement takes the song of the Hoopoe Lark as a starting point, but I’ve shaped the form of the song into something more music-like. After writing these two movements, I found that I liked trying to think like a bird so much that I made up three fictitious birds, the Ringed River Snike, the Pileated Pocket Grouse, and the Green-Rumped Antstalker: their songs make up the remaining two movements of the piece.