Official site of composer Andrea Clearfield. Biography, list of works with audio, score samples, reviews and program notes, photographs, upcoming performances.
Scored for: Native flutes and silver flute Duration: 17 min. Commissioned by:Lisamarie Windwalker Published by: Self-published, Angelfire Press
Contact Andrea Clearfield for score and parts:
WATCH/LISTEN
PROGRAM NOTES
UNIMAGINED BRIDGES by Andrea Clearfield Unimagined Bridges for Flute and Native American Flutes was commissioned by, and dedicated to, Lisamarie Windwalker. The work is influenced by the Four Directions of the Native American Medicine Wheel. Dr. Clearfield’s inspiration for this four movement intimate duet is a Rainer Maria Rilke poem: “As once the winged energy of delight/Carried you over childhood’s dark abysses,/Now beyond your own life build the great/Arch of unimagined bridges.” The work is also informed by Bill Plotkin’s visionary book, “Nature and the Human Soul,” which likens the Native Medicine Wheel to the Soulcentric Wheel of Life. Each movement has a direction and also is associated with a stage of life, element and color. East is birth and early childhood, air, yellow/gold; South, puberty and early adolescence, fire, red; West, late adolescence and early adulthood, water, black; and North, elderhood, earth, white.
As once the wingéd energy of delight
carried you over childhood’s dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.
Photograph by Lenny Foster
Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.
To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.
Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions…For the god
wants to know himself in you.
Unimagined Bridges
Lisamarie Windwalker
Scored for: Native flutes and silver flute
Duration: 17 min.
Commissioned by: Lisamarie Windwalker
Published by: Self-published, Angelfire Press
Contact Andrea Clearfield for score and parts:
WATCH/LISTEN
PROGRAM NOTES
UNIMAGINED BRIDGES by Andrea Clearfield
Unimagined Bridges for Flute and Native American Flutes was commissioned by, and dedicated to, Lisamarie Windwalker. The work is influenced by the Four Directions of the Native American Medicine Wheel. Dr. Clearfield’s inspiration for this four movement intimate duet is a Rainer Maria Rilke poem: “As once the winged energy of delight/Carried you over childhood’s dark abysses,/Now beyond your own life build the great/Arch of unimagined bridges.” The work is also informed by Bill Plotkin’s visionary book, “Nature and the Human Soul,” which likens the Native Medicine Wheel to the Soulcentric Wheel of Life. Each movement has a direction and also is associated with a stage of life, element and color. East is birth and early childhood, air, yellow/gold; South, puberty and early adolescence, fire, red; West, late adolescence and early adulthood, water, black; and North, elderhood, earth, white.
As once the wingéd energy of delight
carried you over childhood’s dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.
Photograph by Lenny Foster
Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.
To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.
Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions…For the god
wants to know himself in you.
– RAINER MARIA RILKE
RECORDING