Tandu
for two flutes

On a spring evening in 1982, passing through the corridors of the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem, my ears were assailed by the sound of two flutes. Two flutists were at practice in one of the rooms, the sound of their playing echoing throughout the building (hence the title: in America Tandu means two together). The sound evoked in my strong musical emotions and I hurried to my room to write down some of the motifs which later served as the basis for the piece. I completed writing Tandu within a few weeks, and it was premiered two years later by the flutists Er'ella Talmi and Uri Shoham who recorded it for the Israel Radio. The composition is basically a dialogue between two equal instruments of the same timbre. The basic motifs undergo several developments in melody, rhythm and articulation. There are heterophonic elements in vertical combinations, inspired by eastern music and contemporary writing techniques. Tandu is a one-movement work, written in free form. The various sections grow out of one another reflecting associative relations to the basic elements of the work and the continuous changes in texture. The middle section written in a different, moderate tempo and a relaxed harmonic mood may give listeners the impression that the piece is in an A-B-A form. The finale is the climax, and serves also as a summation of all the elements in the composition. Tzvi Avni