Instrumentation: flute and Bb clarinet
Duration: 6’30”
Premiered at the International Festival of Music by Women in March 2024, with Dr. Soo Goh on clarinet and Carol Shanksy on flute. This piece makes use of some microtones, multiphonics and extended flute techniques.
Program Notes: Eidòlons is an ancient Greek word that refers to an apparition or an ideal – a ghost, a fantasized hero, or even an idol. Ultimately, the Eidòlon is not real. I found much inspiration for the piece in Walt Whitman’s poem, “Eidòlons.” One stanza warns, “Lo, I or you, Or woman, man, state, known or unknown, We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build, But really build eidòlons.” – what King Solomon called “a chasing after the wind.”
This piece explores the blurred reality of pitch and rhythm through a nebulous sense of meter and tunings that seem “not quite right” based on microtones between the pitches Western ears are accustomed to. Another stanza of Whitman’s poem provided a basis for the imperfectly mirrored form: “Ever the dim beginning. Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle, Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again.) Eidòlons! Eidòlons!”
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