Program Note
I was very happy when Genevieve Lacey asked me if I would write her a little concerto. We have been corresponding for twenty years now and I am glad I finally got the chance to write something for her.
I have to admit, though, that I don’t have much experience with recorders. The most powerful association I have with them is that the New York City public schools regularly get 1000 young students together at the same time to play recorders in Carnegie Hall, so I have seen and heard my three children have their Carnegie debuts, on recorder. Other than that, the recorder music most prominent in my mind was Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #4, but along with the Bach came a distant memory of something I never understood, and still don’t.
I started writing music when I was around 9 years old, but I didn’t really learn how to study it until I was in high school. Until high school I would just listen to recordings and sing along. My father had a recording of the complete Brandenburgs, with Yehudi Menuhin, I think, so I would listen to these recordings all the time, over and over. At some point someone told me that I could buy cheap pocket-sized study scores of old music, and if I looked at them carefully enough I could learn their secrets.
The first study score I ever bought was of the Brandenburg Concerti. Tiny print, cheap paper, really hard to read, but I studied it the best I could. One thing that confused me was the very first page of Brandenburg #4 — my father’s LP identified the solo instruments as recorders, but Bach’s score said the musicians should be playing ‘flauti d’echo’ — echo flutes. I had no idea what that meant, and I am not sure musicologists agree on it, to this day.
Bach’s score said the musicians should be playing ‘flauti d’echo’ — echo flutes. I had no idea what that meant, and I am not sure musicologists agree on it, to this day.David Lang, composer
The association of recorders and echo flutes stayed with me, all these years later, and so I decided to structure my piece around that association. In flute and echo every musical idea is initiated by the solo recorder, and then these ideas are echoed by an obbligato violin, and then echoed again into the ensemble. Just as real-life echoes lose their clarity and focus with each repetition, each new echo-layer of music becomes a little less accurate and detailed, as it ripples away from the original.
Eventually, the soloist finds a way to separate herself from her echoes entirely, and for good.
flute and echo was commissioned for Genevieve Lacey by the Australian Chamber Orchestra, for premiere September 4, 2025, in Newcastle, Australia. The piece is dedicated to Genevieve Lacey and the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
– David Lang, 2025
Hear flute and echo in our upcoming concert, A Musical Awakening, touring 4–21 September. Click here to find out more and book tickets.
Photo: Gaida Festival
