music        news/events        bio        contact        recordings Five Little Fly Stories 1989 soprano flute doubling piccolo clarinet doubling bass clarinet 2 percussion   1: bass drum, 2 cowbells, flexatone, mark tree, sistrum, tam-tam, vibraslap (mounted), xylophone   2: glockenspiel, guiro, marimba, tambourine, 4 tom-toms, triangle, 3 woodblocks string quartet duration 15' first performance: SPNM 50th Anniversary Concert: Jane Manning with Jane's Minstrels, cond. Roger Montgomery Queen Elizabeth Hall, London / March 7, 1993 SCORE The Fly The Flies Progress and Retrogression The Fly The Story TEXTS The Fly She sat on a willow trunk watching part of the battle of Crècy, the shouts, the gasps, the groans, the tramping and the tumbling.  During the fourteenth charge of the French cavalry she mated with a brown-eyed male fly from Vadincourt.  She rubbed her legs together as she sat on a disemboweled horse meditating on the immortality of flies.  With relief she alighted  on the blue tongue of the Duc de Clervaux.  When silence settled and only the whisper of decay softly circled the bodies  and only a few arms and legs still twitched jerkily under the trees,  she began to lay her eggs on the single eye of Johann Uhr, the Royal Armorer.  And thus it was that she was eaten by a swift fleeing from the fires of Estrées.  Miroslav Holub (b.1923) trans. Ian Milner & George Theiner  The Flies The flies of today aren't the same as the flies of yesterday they're less lively more majestic, heavier, more serious  more conscious of their rarity they know they're menaced by genocide In my youth they glued themselves joyously by their hundreds, even their thousands to the paper made for their suicide. They trapped themselves inside those specially formed bottles they skidded they trampled they passed away by the hundreds, even the thousands they also lived and multiplied Now they watch their step  The flies of today aren't the same as the flies of yesterday  Raymond Queneau (1903–1976) trans. Teo Savory  Progress and Retribution They invented a kind of glass which let flies through. The fly would come, push a little with his head and pop, he was on the other side. Enormous happiness on the part of the fly. All this was ruined by a Hungarian scientist when he discovered that the fly could enter but not get out, or vice versa, because he didn't know what gimmick was involved in the glass or the flexibility of its fibers, for it was very fibroid. They immediately invented a fly trap with a sugar cube inside, and many flies perished miserably. So ended any possible brotherhood with these animals, who are deserving of better luck.  Julio Cortazar (b.1914) trans. Paul Blackburn  The Fly The fly I've just brushed  from my face keeps buzzing about me, flesh- eater starved for the soul.  One day I may learn to suffer his mizzling,  sporadic stroll over eyelid and cheek, even be glad of his burnt singing.  The bee is beautiful. She is the fleurs-de-lis in the flesh. She has a tuft of the sun on her back. She brings sexual love to the narcissus flower. She sings of fulfillment only and stings and dies. And everything she ever touches is opening! opening!  And yet we say our last goodbye to the fly last, the flesh-fly last, the absolute last, the naked, dirty reality of him last.  Galway Kinnell (b.1927)  The Story About a fly Which is not A fly  About its swift Powerful wings Which do not exist  About its eyes  Which remain behind In winter  Its eggs which The epicureans Consider a delicacy  Its bite which Is painful And equally imaginary  The art of plucking Its non-existent legs One by one  Fortune-telling With a sugar-cube As its bait  How I drank Its corpse In a glass of milk  And caught Its shadow On the flypaper of my tongue  Charles Simic (b.1938)