The Fallen for flute solo and strings composed by Mark O’Connor in three movements was commissioned by two different flutists for their respective music festivals in the summer of 2003; Marya Martin for the 20th anniversary of her Bridghampton Festival in New York, and Beth Ross-Buckley at her Camarada Festival in San Diego. The compositional process for the piece began for O’Connor in 2003, the very day the war was launched in Iraq. The piece was finished about three weeks later around the time the statues of the Iraqi dictator fell in Baghdad. This music is a reflection of the people who lost their lives in the war. This particular impact on his music makes for quite a different result from O’Connor’s usual optimism. However he finds a way to weave in a sense of a better future in the third movement. By transforming the tragic and darker qualities of the first movement’s themes, and making a departure from the quirky “feet on the ground” playfulness of the second movement, here O’Connor yearns and urges for a more beautiful world.

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