Flute quartet
SKU:
P2.10024
Composed by
Cornelius Boots. Chamber
music, 20th century.
Published by Potenza
Music (P2.10024).
The fourth part
of the Chthonic Flute
Suite commissioned by
Areon Flutes in 2012.
This suite has two main
inspirations:
ideologically it draws
guidance from the book
The Dream and the
Underworld (1979)by James
Hillman (1926-2011) and
musically it explores the
textural possibilities of
a flute ensemble within
the context of the heavy
chamber music style I
have developed with
Edmund Welles: the bass
clarinet quartet since
1996. The quartet is
divided into three
sections:
Thymos--Phrenes--Chthonio
s. Thymos means blood
vapour and is one of the
elements that souls of
the dead in the
underworld completely
lack, therefore they
crave it and seek it out;
they also lack breath
consciousness or phrenes.
The term chthonic
[thon-ik] generally means
underworld. However,
Hillman thoroughly
elaborates that its true
meaning extends below the
earth and beyond it
(p.36) into invisible,
non-physical and far
distant psychic realms as
opposed to being limited
to a primitive earthiness
that limits us to the
physical and fertile
underground. Hillman
weaves a captivating and
expanded perspective on
chthonic and the deeper
mysteries of the
invisible, drawing from
such sources as Greek and
Egyptian mythology,
Freud, Nietzsche, and
more. The underworld is a
realm of only psyche, a
purely psychical
world...underworld is the
mythological style of
describing a
psychological cosmos. Put
more bluntly: underworld
is psyche. (p.46).
The Crave
