High Spirits for Flute and Marimba (No. 2a from Paul Klee: Painted Songs)

High Spirits for Flute and Marimba No. 2 from Paul Klee: Painted Songs

Jonathan Posthuma

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About Paul Klee: Painted Songs Paul Klee: Painted Songs is an ongoing series of instrumental chamber works inspired by the visual art of Paul Klee. The series began in 2011 as a composition assignment from my first composition teacher, Luke Dahn, who asked all of his students to compose a work for clarinet and piano inspired by the iconic "Twittering Machine." Over the years, I have added to the series, continuing to draw on the wealth of inspiration from Klee's images, which are filled with musical references, textures, colors, and symbols that closely link musical concepts with his Klee's philosophy of visual art. To me, these pieces are musical settings of visual poetry, hence "painted songs." What continues to fascinate me about Klee is both the diversity and consistency of his total body of work. Throughout his vast career, certain ideas continue to resurface and find new applications. In this spirit, Paul Klee: Painted Songs continues to expand, ever exploring the poetry of his work through musical interpretation.

Performing Paul Klee: Painted Songs Each piece within Paul Klee: Painted Songs can be performed separately and is considered an independent, free-standing musical work. But, performers are encouraged to recontextualize these pieces into "galleries." Like a curator of an art gallery, performers can combine these works in any order or number, interpolate them with other works by other composers, or arrange them for different instrumental forces. Some pieces are more flexible than others, but the full work is designed to be self-referential and open to interpretation. As the series grows larger, I have aided "curators" by arranging and composing my own "galleries," multi-movement works that were conceived together, but even these can be rearranged and will evolve as more "painted songs" are added to the series and developed in collaboration with performers.

About "High Spirits" (Übermut, 1939) This colorful high-energy painting uses bold lines and figures in an abstract way. Some lines suggest child-like figures that seem to be playing on a playground, which includes an exclamation point and smiling faces. Through experimentation, the composer discovered that by placing other percussion instruments on the bars of the marimba, more sounds are available which can imitate a drum set. This approach is similar to the work of other “prepared” instruments that incorporate foreign objects to create new sounds. Together with the jazzy flute solo, this fast paced composition is colorful and playful.

Note: No. 2a "High Spirits" appears as Mvt. V in Gallery III and has been arranged for sopranino saxophone and percussion (No. 2b / Mvt. IV in Gallery I).

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let ring beyond flute cutoff - March 2011 Sioux Center, IA revised 2017, Newport, MN