By Lewis Spratlan | For Flute, Guitar, and Cello | 15′

Title: Gaia
Composer: Lewis Spratlan
Year Composed: 2018
Instrumentation: For Flute, Guitar, and Cello
Duration: 15′

Format: Performance Set: Score + 3 Parts
Page Size: Letter
Catalog Number: OM0436

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From the composer:

Gaia is among the most primordial of the Greek Deities. She is Mother Earth. Movement I of this piece could be thought of as the birth of the earth, the music twice emerging from a very long note that constantly changes color, maybe a primordial stew.

Movement II, sadness and joy of the earth’s peoples, consists of a theme, three variations, and coda. The theme, presented by unaccompanied guitar, establishes the dominant sadness that continues into and through Variation I. Variation II bursts into joy with dancelike energy, riding on repeated-note figures in the guitar that peck away at a syncopated dialog between the flute and cello. Variation III alternates between the two effects and ultimately yields to a Coda that breaks the prevailing triple meter and becomes duple, thereby squeezing the time units and effectively speeding things up into a near frenzy. Joy prevails.

Commission/Dedication: Composed for and dedicated to Cobus du Toit and The Lumino Ensemble.
Premiere: Premiered on October 6, 2019 at the Historic Jones Theater in Westcliffe, CO by the Lumino Ensemble (Cobus du Toit, flute; Kimberly Patterson, cello; and, Patrick Sutton, guitar).