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Duration: c. 7'
DETAILS
PREMIERED by the Columbia Flute Choir at the February 1999 Mid-Atlantic Flute Fair, Bethesda, MD, Alexandra Molnar-Suhajda conducting.
AVAILABLE (in a new, improved 2nd Edition in 2014) from your favorite sheet music dealer or direct from Presser.
YOUTUBE of a live performance by the Lyra Ensemble.
WINNER, 2000 NFA Newly Published Music awards.
NYSSMA list of recommended contest pieces.
PROGRAM NOTES
In
1997 I had the fascinating experience of visiting the Taiwan Palace Museum,
which holds the majority of art collected from both Taiwan and mainland China
from the past several thousand years. This six-story building
rotates its display every three months, and the collection is so large that it
takes 30 years to show everything.
Seeing
those works displayed in June 1997, I was most taken by the many carvings
dedicated to the Asian Zodiac cycle. Many artists in various media and styles
have depicted the twelve-year animal cycle as a set of stylized carvings or
drawings, and I've been eager to create a musical parallel ever since this
visit.
In
late January 1999, flutist-composer Alexandra Molnar-Suhajda asked if I had any
new flute choir music that her ensemble could premiere at the Mid-Atlantic Flute
Fair in February. I didn't, but it struck me that a flute choir would be good
to portray the "year of the rabbit," which was coincidentally
beginning that weekend.Within a few days the piece was started and finished. The
music, in various ways, pays homage to the many "Rabbits" in my
immediate family, to rabbits in general, and to the Chinese astrological sayings
about people born in the year of the rabbit.
THE
YEAR OF THE RABBIT is dedicated to Alexandra Molnar-Suhajda, who (I later
discovered) was also born in the Year of the Rabbit.
ABOUT
THE SECOND EDITION (2014)
The
original 1999 edition of THE YEAR OF THE RABBIT was engraved hastily out of
concert scheduling necessity; its lack of cues, visual clumsiness, and
insufficient cautionaries, has made the music much harder to play than it
actually is. This new edition is larger, better spaced, has ample cues and
cautionaries, and also has a handful of minor musical revisions to help smooth
performance. The composer thanks all the flutists who asked for better parts,
and in particular Cindy Anne Broz and Anne Levinson of Flûtes de Salon, and
Ellen Fisher Deerberg of the Volanti Flute Quartet, for specific suggestions
leading to improved articulations and other idiomatic details.
PERFORMANCE
SUGGESTIONS
Challenges
in tonguing, fast breaths, and dynamics have been improved in the second
edition, which is much better for performance.
THE
YEAR OF THE RABBIT may be performed by a quartet or an ensemble. While a solo
quartet is the most light and supple, the use of multiple players allows for
solo/tutti contrasts and staggered breathing.
REVIEWS
"This second edition comes fifteen years after the original and features larger parts, better spacing, clearer cues, simplified cautionary accidentals, and a few minor musical changes. The work can be played by flute quartet or by an ensemble, though the solo quartet more fully captures the "watercolor" of the title."
– Flute Talk (Diane Boyd-Schultz), February 2015
"Daniel Dorff always pleases, and his THE YEAR OF THE RABBIT (1999), evidently following a personal Chinese calendar taste, did not disappoint. Dorff is deeply musical, eschews rhetoric, and this piece for eight flutes was charming and unaffected.
– Penn Sounds (Lou Camp), Summer 1999
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2010 performance at Aspen Music
Festival
all-Dorff children's concert
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