Raga Saat
for 4 C Flutes
Flute Quartet - Sheet Music

Chamber Music flute quartet

SKU: PR.114416820

For 4 C Flutes. Composed by Derek Charke. Sws each. Contemporary. Set of Score and Parts. With Standard notation. Composed 2011. 32+8+8+8+4 pages. Duration 9:30. Theodore Presser Company #114-41682. Published by Theodore Presser Company (PR.114416820).

ISBN 9781598069761. UPC: 680160624775. 9x12 inches.

RAGA SAAT for 4 C FlutesRAGA SAAT is the second in a series of flute ensembleworks by Canadian composer-flutist Derek Charke creatinga uniquely mesmerizing soundworld. Using post-minimalostinatos in 7 with criss-crossing syncopations, RAGASAAT explores percussive and unfamiliar textures frombeatboxing and other expanded techniques to create adazzling sound environment. Be sure to hear Charke’s ownperformance on YouTube! Derek Charke (b. 1974) is a Canadian composer, flutist, and professor at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. Charke has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet, Toronto Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony, Symphony Nova Scotia, St. Lawrence String Quartet, and Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis, as well as an impressive list of other performers and organizations. His music has been performed in Carnegie Hall, the Guggenheim Museum, and Disney Hall. He is the president of the Acadia New Music Society which runs the Shattering the Silence New Music Festival, and he appears regularly as a new music performer and improviser on the flute. His music has been described as post-minimal, inventive, rich-textured, full of color, and imbued with drama and rhythmic vitality. His music encompasses tonal and modal harmonies and melodies, sometimes with a strong rhythmic pulse in conjunction with extended instrumental techniques, often paired with soundscapes created from original field recordings of nature and the Canadian environment.Derek has a long-standing collaboration with the Kronos Quartet. Works for them include his Concerto for String Quartet (commissioned by the Toronto Symphony); Cercle du Nord III forstring quartet with a soundscape from the Arctic; a series of 13 Inuit Throat Song Games; and Tundra Songs, a 30-minute work commissioned for the Kronos Quartet and Inuk throat singerTanya Tagaq by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Premiered at Disney Hall in Los Angeles, David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet said of Tundra Songs: “It’s really one of the major, spectacular pieces that has ever been written for Kronos,” and Stanley Fefferman of Opus One Review wrote of the Concerto for String Quartet: “Charke’s music is eclectic, hectic, and sometimes electric. Charke’s music is about the freedom to be an individual.”Derek’s studies with David Felder, Louis Andriessen, Steve Martland, Paul Patterson, Cindy McTee, and Martin Mailman included a prestigious four-year Presidential Fellowship at SUNYBuffalo, as well as a grant from the Dutch government to study with Andriessen. He attended the University of North Texas (receiving the Outstanding Student in Composition Award, andthe David M. Schimmel Memorial Composition Scholarship), the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague, and SUNY Buffalo where he received a Ph.D. in composition.As a professional flutist, Derek is a member of subText and performs as a duo with percussionist Mark Adam. He earned a Master’s degree in flute performance from SUNY Buffalo where hestudied with the late Cheryl Gobbetti Hoffman. As an undergraduate at the University of North Texas he studied trumpet with Dr. Leonard Candelaria, while also pursuing the flute.
PROGRAM AND PERFORMANCE NOTESRaga Saat (2011) is a companion work to my first Raga quartet Raga Cha. Similarly, Raga Saat is not based on an authentic Raga, but rather attempts to emulate the sound world through the use of various extended flute techniques. It is repetitive and meditative in character. Many sounds are created with a technique where the flutist enunciates the syllable cha to produce a desired toneless and rough sounding effect.Raga Saat is in 7/8 time. Saat is an English translation of the number seven in Hindi. RAGA SAAT plays with several polyrhythmic patterns that define the rhythmic flavor of the piece. There are at least two (if not three or four) distinctive subdivisions of time, including 4+3 and 3+3+1. A further subdivision of 3+3+3+3+2 (in 16ths) is heard in the bass voice at most times providing a hemiola-like ostinato. An isorhythmic talea acts as a drone, imitating the Surpeti (Swar Peti) or Shruti Box, while the other voices provide melodic figurations.