POEM for Flute and Piano

Kozuch’s POEM is a plaintive elegy, perfect for memorial concerts, in religious services, or as a lyric interlude in recital. Although composed with piano accompaniment, the music is also very effective in performance with organ.

 

Thaddeus Kozuch (1913-1991) was a Chicago-based pianist, composer, and professor at DePaul University and Northwestern University. His beautiful POEM was composed originally for violin and piano in 1937 for his wife-to-be, Jacqueline Frye. He revised POEM for flute and piano in 1988 but the work was discovered only recently in a piano bench by the composer’s daughter, flutist Ann Fairbanks.

Although the final pencil manuscript is musically complete, it lacks dynamics, and this publication presents the music as the composer left it.

The following performance suggestions are provided by Ann Fairbanks:

Many nuances of the work may be left to the discretion of the performer. There are quite a few notes that may be slurred, such as sets of eighth notes or triplet-eighths; if notes are articulated as written, the tonguing should be legato.

Dynamics for both flute and piano could be as follows: begin the work p, then crescendo to f in bars 6-7. Decrescendo in 10-11 to a p in bar 12. The most intense section (bars 16-32) should be played with energy and full sonority, including a crescendo in 26 to f
in 27. The conclusion, beginning at bar 42, should be played p, with the last measures performed quietly.