Composer’s note

   During the last few years, Greek traditional music has been the moving force of my compositions. I re-invent, re-structure and re-compose traditional music themes, preserving their energy and subtlety, the authenticity of their primordial model, their vibration and soul, following the paths of the “anonymous” folk composers; the “anonymous” composers of every kind and without borders, outside any racial self-admiration. As this material swirls in my hands, it inevitably gains something from my personality (the dose being determined by the material itself as well as the innumerable “hearings” of my music, as the sound is being shaped step by step on paper). These large or small doses of personal expression leave no room for returning to familiar ground.

   The work Forget Me for solo flute (2009) forms part of the cycle of works under the general title Typewriter Tune, which attempts to decipher musical letters sent to various recipients. Each work offers the next something from its own world and thus a succession is created with a beginning lost in time, a present that is not static and a future looking into the superiority of evolution. In Forget Me for solo flute, the recipient is the “anonymous” creator, whereas the music material is derived from two traditional dances: a Karsilamas from Thrace (a 9/8, face to face dance counted as 2+2+2+3) and a Serra, a Pyrrhic dance from Pontos (a war dance from the Black Sea region in 7/16).

G. KOUMENDAKIS

Translated by Maria Hnaraki

FIRST PERFORMANCE:

July 3, 2009

Künstlerhaus München, Germany

Katrin Zenz, flute

Audio sample - track 12