Dawn Carol: A Fanfare for Flutes

This is an amazingly effective piece of music. Beautiful as a solo piece, it can transform into a wash of sound by using more players. Written at around a grade 6 level and without barlines it does benefit from a little preparation. The skill is then listening to the previous player to judge your entry before playing with complete flexibility and freedom of expression. This takes everyone out of their comfort zone, especially if using a large performance space to spread out, but as the wonder of the music evolves this caution soon disappears and the result is a glorious rippling of sound which is really magical. An added bonus is that Margaret Lowe has given permission for endless copies to be made, making it a very cost effective purchase. Forever useful and everyone loves it. Perfect!

Margaret Lowe has been a driving force on the UK flute choir scene for as long as I can remember. She has worked tirelessly to raise the profile of the flute choir as a serious musical entity, commissioning works and setting up the National Flute Orchestra. Her Dawn Carol is a Fanfare for flutes, commissioned by Carol Kniebusch Noe and the IMU Aute choir in 1996. It was previously published by Margaret's organisation, the Birmingham Flute Commission, and is now available in this new edition from Emerson.

The musical material itself is simple, with short motivic ideas raking inspiration from bird song and the Dawn Chorus hinted at in the title. Each player has the same material and treats the music canonically, coming in after the previous player's first phrase. The piece can be played by any number of players, and sounds fabulous when the players are positioned throughout the performance venue. The melodic ideas are clearly notated, but there is room for flexibility and expressive freedom, which provides a wonderfully varied sound around the space, as different players interact and approach the material in different ways.

The idea is simple, but enormously effective, and means the piece can be played by a variety of different players and ensembles. The flute writing is mostly in the upper registers, and there's a pianissimo high A at the end which needs some control, but the flexibility of tempo and rhythmic freedom in the phrases means that it could be approached without too much trouble by intermediate players of around Grade 4 upwards.

This is a gem in the flute choir's repertoire, and I’d love to hear it performed more often. Bravo to Emerson Edition for making this widely available.