Franco Donatoni - Fili(1981)(with full score)

Fl. Pierre-Yves Artaud
Pf. Jacqueline Méfano
At one time in his career Italian composer Franco Donatoni (1927 - 2000) cared little about performance or performers, considering his interest in a composition done once he got all the notes down cleanly on paper. This 1981 composition illustrates a change in this point of view by presenting an intriguing, if procedure-bound, essay in flute and piano virtuosity.
Donatoni was strongly influenced by the leading European serialists, particularly French composer Pierre Boulez, in the early part of his career. The Milan-born composer's response to serialism was to write dense, highly structured music, and to achieve it by putting a basic passage of music through rigorous, almost mathematical processes, without knowing what the final result would be.
In the mid-'70s he withdrew from some features of this style. The main change was that he took an interest in particular performers (especially members of Paul Méfano's Ensemble 2E2M) and began writing works stressing small numbers of individual lines.
Fili is a 13-minute set of variations for flute and piano. It is an example of Donatoni's use of pre-determined directions for handling the basic musical material, which is stated at the beginning of the work. Thereafter, what happens is nearly entirely the result of the automatic application of specific rules for permutation of the music. Applied to the opening idea, this process creates the first variation. Since this is a chained set of variations, permutations are similarly applied to the resulting variations to create the next variation.
The rules for handling musical material are so devised that little by little the flute takes a more dominant part in the duet of two players until at the end it has elaborate runs and high passages that challenge the limits of the instrument's virtuosity.
This emergence of the flute into spectacular display is enough to keep the music interesting, but earlier in the process many listeners will be aware that the duo moves from one panel of sound to the other without the music seeming to communicate much. In other words, before the virtuosity kicks in, process is all and musical spontaneity and underlying meaning may be perceived as missing.

[@taishiohira5877]

refrain of flute's early passage and chords like crush of piano are impressive

[@robkeeleycomposer]

Top-notch Donatoni!

[@es_ist_unmoeglich]

Truth