David Braid (*1975) The Bird Fancyer´s New Delight (2023)
Word premiere, live at the Colón Theater, July 2023.
00:00 Canary PTSD
01:04 Woodlark Dogfight
02:10 Trosil’s Wing
04:51 Country Linnett
María Cecilia Muñoz, flute.
Tiffany Butt, piano.
This piece was commissioned to be a part of the CD “LIBERTAD” The Will to Freedom, recorded and produced in Germany by the Label ARS-Produktion in March 2024.
The Bird Fancyer's New Delight - a musical plea for freedom (text by Claus-Dieter Hanauer, extracted from the CD booklet)
Composed in 2023, The Bird Fancyer's New Delight by composer and pianist David Braid, born in Hamilton, Canada in 1975, was commissioned by the two performers on this recording, flutist María Cecilia Muñoz and pianist Tiffany Butt, who also premiered it on August 11, 2023 at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires.Braid's piece is inspired by a musical anthology written around 1715 by the English composer, music publisher and instrument-maker John Walsh (ca. 1655-1736). The Bird Fancyer's Delight (alternative title: The Bird Fancyer's Delight, or Choice Observations And Directions Concerning the Teaching of all sorts of Singing Birds after the Flagelet and Flute [recorder] when rightly made as to Size and tone, with Lessons properly Compos'd within the Compass and faculty of each Bird, viz. for the Canary-Bird, Linnet, Bull-Finch, Wood-Lark, Black-Bird, Throustill [thrush], Nightingale and Starling.The whole fairly Engraven and Carefully Corrected) contained pieces for flageolet, recorder and flute not only composed by John Walsh himself, but also by Henry Purcell, William Williams, Angelo Michele Bartolotti, Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Marco Uccellini and Claudio Monteverdi. These short pieces featured transcribed bird calls, such as those of the nightingale, the starling, or the canary, as well as sonorous depictions of bird habitats, such as the forest. This anthology makes reference to a popular 18th-century pastime, considered cruel by today’s standards, of training captive songbirds, sometimes deprived of their sight, to sing melodies in order to be sold for a fair price to members of aristocracy or the wealthy elite.
Braid selected five melodies from this collection and used them to compose a new, five-movement work by artfully distorting and transfiguring the original themes. For example, the theme of the canary in the second movement - entitled Canary PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) - becomes a sphere of sound through a unique use of flute and piano resonance intermingling, creating an eerie aura of space and isolation and thus alluding to the bird's lamentable situation. This album’s theme, freedom versus the lack of freedom, is expressed here in a direct and harrowing way.