BY ANGUS MCPHERSON
The Cabinet of Oddities is a show combining fiction, flutes and fantasy. Premiered at the speculative fiction convention Conflux (which happened to fall on the same weekend and in the same city as the Australian Flute Festival in 2015), the show presents new works of fiction and music by some of Australia’s finest composers and writers. But this isn’t the first time flute music has been composed to sci-fi or supernatural themes. We count down the top six works for sci-fi flute ahead of The Cabinet of Oddities Melbourne Fringe Festival show this month.
6. Voice
A supernatural horror story for solo flute, Tōru Takemitsu’s Voice draws on elements of Noh Theatre and traditional Japanese music combined with experimental flute techniques. Takemitsu requires the performer to hum, shout and growl into the flute, create clicking, percussive noises and deliver text from Shizo Takiguchi’s Handmade Proverbs in French and English: ‘Who goes there? Speak, transparence, whoever you are!’
5. Constellations
John Buckley’s Constellations is written for a solo flute part for bass flute, alto flute, C flute and piccolo, against a backing track of 12 flutes. According to Buckley’s program note, a constellation can refer to any ‘group or cluster of brilliant things’, and in this work it is the brilliance of sonority produced by clusters of flutes. The piece depicts a ‘starry’ voyage, from the earthy bass flute to the celestial glittering of the piccolo.
4. Courbe Dominante
Australian composer (and writer) Rosalind Page’s Courbe Dominante (Dominant Curve) combines frenetic, burbling flute sounds and ethereal multiphonics with haunting, otherworldly Saturnian sound spectra – not so much science fiction as real science sounds.
3. Diary of an Alien
Diary of an Alien by American composer Margaret Brouwer is a collection of potentially free-standing movements – excerpts from a diary. ‘This could be the diary of an alien from society, from another world, from another planet, the diary of someone who is alienated from modern day life,’ Brouwer writes in her program note. The second movement Drifting wanders through space and time, while the fourth movement No Rotary Phone is a humorous semi-dramatic piece based on the more prosaic tribulations of dealing with voice-mail – enough to make anyone feel alienated!
2. Hatching Aliens
Opening with chilling wind sounds and ominous chittering, Hatching Aliens by English flautist-composer Ian Clarke features three excitingly titled movements: Something is there!, Alien Chill Out/Blue Alien, and The Fear Returns – Battle Tempo. With stunning cadenza passages and a screaming, dramatic finale, Hatching Aliens will have you on the edge of your seat.
1. Star Wars...and The Muppets
For flute/sci-fi crossovers, though, it’s hard to go past Greg Pattillo beatboxing music from the film Star Wars – bookended with the theme music from The Muppets.
Angus McPherson will be performing in The Cabinet of Oddities at the Australian Institute of Music, Melbourne, September 23 and 24, as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Image supplied: Lucia Ondrusova. Featured image Zoltan Voros via Flickr CC2.0.
