Replies the Hoopoe

Abstract

This is a virtuoso duo composition for oboe and bassoon. This lively, loquacious duo was inspired by the active lines of Charlie Parker’s ”Yardbird Suite“ (1946), and reimagined as a score for the Persian story of ”The Conference of Birds“ (Simurgh). In this Sufi fable, a gathering of all birds, still without a sovereign, ask the Hoopoe, the wisest amongst them, who should be their king. This well-known story from the “Mantiq-ut-Tayr,“ was titled from a line in the Qur‘an (27:16) in which King Solomon exclaims, “O people, we have been taught the language of birds…” The musical gestures allude to the familiar clatter in ornithologhy, where surprise and virtuosity mesmerize our ears.