Beverly Harlton ~ Senior Recital - Medieval Suite, Katherine Hoover: mvt . 3, The Drunken Friar

Beverly Harlton, Senior Flute Recital

Dr. Yuling Huang-Davie, piano

University of Louisiana at Lafayette

20 November 2009

Medieval Suite (1986), Katherine Hoover (b. 1937): mvt. 3, The Drunken Friar

Katherine Hoover is a flutist and contemporary composer. In the flute realm, she is best-known for such pieces as Kokopeli. Medieval Suite was originally written for solo flute and orchestra. Hoover later reduced it for solo flute and piano.

"Medieval Suite was inspired by characters and events described in Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, a history of fourteenth-century France. It was a violent, bitter century of extensive wars, and Ms. Tuchman sees it as something of a reflection of our own. The first movement, "Virelai," uses parts of a work in that form by Guillaume de Machaut, a French composer of that era. The "Black Knight" was a valiant, violent British prince, barred from his beloved fighting by a wasting disease. The fourteenth century was a low point for the Catholic Church, with warring Popes in Rome and Avignon, and "The Drunken Friar" was apparently a common sight. In this movement, I have freely adapted and embroidered a Gregorian chant [Kyrie eleison] and quoted a well-known round of the time, "Sumer is acumin in." "Princess Isabelle" describes a daughter of the King of France who was engaged at the age of six, sent to England to live permanently, and wed at twelve--a common fate for royal children. The "Demon's Dance" was a desparate marathon dance done by some in hopes of avoiding the Black Plague."

~Katherine Hoover

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