Click on a cover to learn more about a specific book

Audio Description of Discourse for Two Flutes

About the Duets

The idea for these four books came about as I was searching for new flute duets to play with my advanced student XiangQun Shao.  Most of the collections of flute duets on the market tended to be editions or arrangements of composers who have been dead for over 100 years.  Those few books that did include modern compositions tended to be comprised of a very small number of pieces.  Upon this realization, I began to compose new duets, one every week or so for my student’s weekly lesson.  The duets that I wrote were fairly difficult, as we were looking for a change of pace from the casual pieces in the flute repertoire.  It was not until I had composed ten or so duets that I even considered printing them as a collected work.  At first, I finished twelve duets and was going to conclude with the one book.  But I was enjoying the genre so much that I continued to write more and more until I had completed all twenty-seven necessary for Volumes 1 and 2.  As in all composing endeavors, the enjoyable part is the creating and not editing.  The editing process took twice as long as composing all of them.  Volumes 0 and 3 came about in quick succession within the same year as ideas and inspiration continued to flow.

The moderate book is not all that moderate.  While XiangQun and I were comfortable casually playing through the duets in a lesson, we did have some difficulties when working with them in the recording studio.  The same was true for the difficult book (which actually didn’t give us that much more trouble).  In the difficult book, it is relatively easy to play each piece slowly.  When played at their proper tempi however, they become imposing challenges.  Please be aware that I do not write difficult pieces just to be difficult – it just seems to work out that way.  The same is true in many of my compositions for other instrumentations.  As for the most difficult of these flute duets in Volume 2, I acknowledge that they are down-right ferocious.  I am sure that you and your audience will find them worthwhile.  Good luck, and enjoy.

If you record any of the duets or simply have some stories to tell, send your comments and feedback my way.  I would love to hear from you.

Chris Ludwig