Born in the Twentieth Century: Contemporary Flute Works by East Asian Female Composers

Abstract

One of the primary changes to classical music within the last few decades has been an increased focus on the music of underrepresented populations. This has led to a major push to promote and perform the music of female composers. Unfortunately, the contribution of East Asian female composers has received less attention. The music of East Asian female composers is infrequently performed despite the fact that there are many composers who have written major repertoire for the flute. The goal of this performance dissertation is to introduce and publicize the flute repertoire of these East Asian female composers. I have selected twelve compositions embracing a wide range of musical characteristics, techniques, and instrumentation. One of these works was commissioned specifically for this dissertation. The works performed and discussed in this dissertation are the following: Mari Takano—Corridors of Light for solo flute; Haruna Miyake—Musik for piccolos, flutes and guitar; Karen Tanaka—Invisible Curve for flute, violin, viola, cello and piano; Yuko Uebayashi—Sonate for Flute and Piano; Chen Yi—Memory for solo flute; Faye Chiao—Songs of a Lost Bird suite for flute and harp; Wang Jie—From New York, with Love II for flute, viola and harp; Chen Yi—The Golden Flute for flute and orchestra; Hi-Kyung Kim—Instant Breath for solo flute; Hyo-Shin Na—Four Books for flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon and horn; Binna Kim—Return of the Repressed for flute, cello and piano; Hee-Yun Kim—Memoir of Dong-Hak for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. This dissertation may be found on ProQuest and all the recordings associated may be found through the Digital Repository at the University of Maryland.