Odd Quartet No. 1

Pan Flute, English Horn, Marimba, String Bass

$12.00

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Voicing/instrumentation: Pan Flute, English Horn, Marimba, String Bass
Composer: Sam Kauffman
Duration: 2:45
Year: 2011

I think all will agree this is an odd collection of four instruments, but does the world really need more string quartets? I think not. With this piece, you can give the audience a combination of sounds they have never heard before in their lives.

Here we have a placid 3/2 adagio theme with variations in the form of a lilting 3/4 moderato an upbeat 4/4 allegro. In dealing with a the pan flute, a diatonic instrument, I couldn’t resist the challenge of composing a tune with a decidedly non-diatonic chord progression. The result is that in this C major piece, the pan flute isn’t even tuned to C major.

This was written for an Eastern-European-style pan flute, but any kind of pan flute can work as long as it can be tuned to F major (C Mixolydian) a has a range from C4 to G6, with an optional G3. The marimba part goes down to A2 and only requires two mallets.

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