by Leonard Garrison, Associate Professor of Flute, The
University of Idaho
Copyright©2014 by Leonard
Garrison
To view my teaching video of this piece, please visit my YouTube Channel.
Arthur Honegger (1903-1990) was a Swiss composer who spent
most of his life in Paris. He studied composition with Charles-Marie Widor
(1844-1937) and Vincent d’Indy (1851-1931) at the Paris Conservatory. He was
one of Les Six, a loosely affiliated
group of French composers (the others were Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Darius
Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre), although his works are
generally more serious and complex than those of his confreres. He is most
famous for Pacific 231, an orchestral
work that imitates the sound of a train. His flute works include the Concerto da camera for flute, English
horn, and strings (1948), a masterpiece of the first rank, and Danse de la chèvre for solo flute
(1921), in the repertoire of every flutist.
Honegger’s Romance
is not as well known. Written in 1952-1953, it is available in Contemporary French Recital Pieces, Vol. 1 published
by the International Music Company:
Rated Level D by the National Flute
Association, it requires flexible timing, close coordination between the
contrapuntal lines and flute and piano, and sensitivity to harmonic changes.
The tempo marking Andantino
is slightly faster than Andante or walking; an appropriate metronome mark is
quarter=63. Each phrase can start with hesitancy and then pick up momentum. An
expressive figure is the two sixteenths and eighth in meas. 4, 8, 12, etc. Lean
on the first sixteenth.
The piece is in ternary or ABA form with the reprise of A at
meas. 38 abbreviated. To bring out the structure of the piece, play a little
faster, about quarter=80, in the middle section, meas. 22-37. The ending is
inconclusive; a slower tempo from meas. 43 to the end enhances the sense of
mystery.
Good luck, or bonne
chance!
I think you have the birth and death dates incorrect for Arthur Honegger. The Oxford Companion to Music, the Grove Concise Dictionary of Music and IMSLP all give his dates as being 1892 to 1955.
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