music for flute
Seven of the collections of music for flute and piano listed below are now available from Alfred Music. Check it out here.
To view the master list of flute music in the Store, go here. Any piano parts ordered from this section can be provided in plastic comb binding or in 3-hole punched pages for use in a 3-ring binder. Also, .pdf’s for reading on an iPad can be provided on request for any score or part in addition to the hard copy at no additional cost. If you would like to hear a complete recording to help consider a piece, write to me at newertunes@hotmail.com.
I have always loved the flute, and for many years I have loved a flute player, my wife Marion. Consequently I have written for flute often, especially things for flute and piano that we perform only in our living to an audience of two dogs. Some are arrangements of classics, others are new compositions. Most piano parts have manageable page turns.
flute & piano duos quartets flute choir flute with other instruments or voice concerto
works for flute and piano
Women of the West (arr. 2020)
In the soundtrack of the American West in the 19th Century, migrants, ranchers, miners, and frontiersmen whiled away long and tedious hours singing a wide assortment of ballads, cowboy songs, and other ditties. Here are a few pioneer & cowboy songs in which women were the central figures, most of which were strong women making their way in a man’s world. Includes Fair Fannie Moore, Belle Starr, Flora Lily of the West, Sweet Betsy from Pike, Clementine, and The Yellow Rose of Texas. Details & excerpts here; available from Alfred Music here.
Jig fer John (2000/2015)
An arrangement of an earlier simple lead sheet Celtic jig (available in the Jazz section here) for flute & piano with a contrasting B section added; moderately advanced. Excerpt & demo here; available from Alfred Music here.
Sea Shanties (arr. 2013)
Moderately advanced level. Shanties are shipboard songs that were sung by sailors as they worked the great clipper ships and other merchant vessels of the 19th century. The Flying Cloud set the record for the fastest time from New York around Cape Horn to San Francisco in 1853, a record that stood until 1989. What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor? is one of the more famous, having been sung by generations of American schoolchildren. Shenandoah - perhaps the most lyrical of shanties - is an enigmatic song of longing that was sung by sailors on flat-bottom boats plying the Mississippi. Jack Wrack tells the story of a young sailor who loses his earnings in an unfortunate relationship with a woman ashore. Details and excerpts here; available from Alfred Music here.
Three Little Latin Rondos (2012)
Moderately advanced level. Exactly as titled, these comprise a little set of Latin rhythmic flavors in rondo forms, fast-slow-fast. Details and excerpts here; available from Alfred Music here.
Chopin: Waltz in A Minor, op. Posthumous (arr. 2012)
Moderate difficulty. A simple arrangement of this beautiful and famous waltz for piano. The piano part is quite easy, using two hands to play the accompaniment Chopin originally gave to the left hand. Details and excerpts here.
Marigold (1986/2012)
Moderately advanced level. This is a jazz ballad I wrote for my combo in the mid 1980s, and I finally got around to arranging it for us to play at home. Though no real improvisation is required, both players must play in swing rhythm; as with all jazz, this is not notated. Improvised elaboration - especially in the piano part - is encouraged. Details and excerpts here.
Satie: Gymnopédie #1 (arr. 2011)
Very moderate difficulty. The famous waltz-like Gymnopédie, with the piano part adopting some components of Debussy’s arrangement for orchestra. Details and excerpts here.
Bartok: from Little Suite, from For Children, Sz.42 (arr. 2011)
Moderate difficulty. These are arrangements of five of Bela Bartok's famous children's pieces for piano, all based upon folk songs that Bartok collected from Hungary or Slovakia. Details and excerpts here.
Ravel: Pavane pour une Infante Defunte (arr. 2010)
Moderately advanced. The famous Pavane for a Dead Princess - a piano work more famous in his beautiful arrangement for orchestra - here in my reduction for flute and piano. Details and excerpts here.
Mozart: “II. Romanze,” from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (arr. 2010)
Moderately advanced. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's second movement, Romanze, from the Serenade #13 in G, K.525, popularly known as A Little Night Music. Details and excerpts here.
Domesticities (2009-2010)
Advanced. A little suite of fond ond and sometimes humorous takes on our ordinary daily lives - I. Where Are My Keys?, II. A Good Old Dog Goes Out, III. Bike Hike, IV. Late, Again, and V. Back Porch Sundown. $10, available from Alfred Music here. More detail and demos here.
Four Polish Folk Songs (arr. 2009)
Moderately advanced. A lament about a Ukrainian girl to whom her Polish boyfriend says goodbye for the last time (Hey Falcons), a traditional lullaby (A Little Spark), a kujawiak, Na wierzbowym listku (The Nightingale and the Willow Leaf), a traditional Polish dance related to the mazurka, and a Krakowiak, a fast, syncopated dance in duple time from the region of Kraków, the steps of which mimic the movements of horses. Details and excerpts here; available from Alfred Music here. Also available in a version for flute/piccolo, viola, piano, and contrabass; contact me directly for this.
Three Romances (1976, rev. 1981)
Challenging. An early work of which I am still fond, composed while studying at Western Michigan University. Three movements: slow-fast-moderate; all are inclined to the romantic, but without programmatic content. Details and excerpts here.
Floot Loops (1979)
Moderately advanced, in various jazz styles. A gift to Marion with titles referencing various facets of our early lives together in Columbia. A loopy blues, a jazz waltz/lullaby, a ballad, a bossa-nova, and an edgy swing tune. Details and excerpts here; $12, available from Alfred Music here.
duos
Attitudes (2008)
Advanced. Scored for two C flutes or two alto flutes. Having been for many years a teacher of teenagers and parent of a couple more, I have tried here to capture three of the many quintessential states of the teenage psyche - I. Flirty, II. Pouty, III. Antsy. In quieter moments—i.e., when not having to deal with them—I find these things amusing. It is remarkable that we can survive our teenage years and those of our children. These pieces should be rendered with the sort of wry good humor that is most possible later on, looking back at those awkward episodes. Commercially available here. Details and excerpts here.
Habanera Chromatique (1994)
Advanced. Scored for alto flute and marimba; also available in versions for oboe and clarinet. The marimba part requires a pair of bongos mounted on a stand over the left end of the marimba, played with the marimba mallets. The flutist occasionally plays a small metal egg-shaped shaker. Available from Manduca Music here. Details and excerpts here.
quartets
Three Carols (2019)
Moderate difficulty. Scored for 4 C flutes or 4 altos. Easy, practical arrangements of “Good King Wenceslas,” “The Dreidl Song,” and “The Holly and the Ivy.” Details and excerpts here.
Cripple Creek Counterpoint (1992)
Moderately advanced (Grade 3). Scored for 4 C flutes or 3 C flutes and alto; also commercially available in a version for woodwind quintet here. Named after a small stream of dubious purity that runs behind the original campus of the Fine Arts Center, in its 3-1/2 minutes the piece goes through sections of unison playing, tuttis, quasi-minimalism, and imitative polyphony. Available from Little Piper press here. Details and excerpts here.
flute choir
Clichés (2020)
Advanced; appropriate for college ensembles. Scored for piccolo, 3 C flutes, alto, and bass. These five brief movements each imagine some way of illustrating its title, drawn from current vernacular: I. Slippery Slope, II. On the Back Burner, III. One Crisis At a Time, IV. Bells & Whistles, and V. A Well-Oiled Machine?. Each is constructed from an 8-note synthetic scale, with the five scales incorporating some similarities. Details and excerpts here.
flute with other instruments or voice
Arbitrary Extractions (2020)
Scored for Alto Flute and String Trio; challenging. These three short movements each derive their pitch content from relationships extracted – somewhat arbitrarily – from the 10 points of the ancient Pythagorean tetractys. The pitch sets/scales are each produced by manipulations of a sequence of intervals, and the resulting pitches assigned – in a consistent order – to the points on the tetractys. This approach seems more or less appropriate, as Pythagoras may well have used the ratios suggested by the tetractys – 2:1 (P8), 3:2 (P5) and 4:3 (P4) – to formulate the Pythagorean scales. Details of the structure are here; excerpts here. Publication by Tetractys Publishing, London, is anticipated.
Une Petite Plaisance (2018)
Scored for soprano and flute, on an epithalamium by Keller Cushing Freeman; about 3:55. $10 for score, flute part, & demo. Taking a cue from the many figures from Greek mythology included in Edmund Spenser’s Epithalamion, a public ode to his bride written for their wedding in 1594, this poem is musically rendered in modes that would have been familiar to the ancient Greeks. The tone overall is one of lightheartedness and joy in the little things. Details & excerpt here.
Cripple Creek Counterpoint (1992)
Moderately advanced (Grade 3). As above, transcribed for woodwind quintet with new part for bassoon. Write to me for details.
concerto
Takes Two (2003)
Challenging. Scored for C flute doubling piccolo, harp, and chamber orchestra; about 22 minutes total. The title of this concertino reflects a number of dualities in the work. It requires two instruments, flute and piccolo, to perform the solo part, and two parts to present the whole: the soloist and the orchestra. The flute and piccolo also perform briefly as a 2-instrument chamber ensemble. The basic melodic material, thoroughly introduced in the opening flute solo, obsesses with various combinations of major and minor thirds; the harmony does this as well, which leads naturally to the production of two essential harmonic flavors-- diatonic and chromatic. Expressively, there is somewhat of a contest between agitated and lyrical elements, with the lyrical side winning out in both movements. And, most importantly, the two movements each have a different “take” - very slow and very fast - on the same melodic and harmonic material. The flute/piccolo part is highly virtuosic and incorporates a wide variety of techniques and range of expression. Details and excerpts here.