The Sonata for Flute and Piano was begun on April 10, 2008 and completed on the following May 7th. It was written for a young and very talented flutist at the time that he was completing his sophomore year of undergraduate studies at Indiana University. I got to know James Romeo from our both being involved in the same church in Bloomington, Indiana. As in many of my works, I have personalized this work for its dedicatee through the use of the musical letters of my friend's full name, James Catena Romeo, in the third movement. In this movement are also heard snippets of Luther's great hymn, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. The work is essentially romantic in character, in keeping with the style of music preferred by its dedicatee, although the 2nd movement, a scherzo, is much less tonally focused. In fact, the opening line in the flute part is a twelve-tone row, even if the movement is not constructed along serial lines. The opening and closing movements are in a basic tonality centered around E Minor (but in keeping with my typical use of free tonality along the way), whereas the 2nd movement occasionally hints at a tonal center of G Mminor, and the third movement more-or-less centered on A Minor. Rather than closing with a vigorous and flashy finale, I elected to end the work with a movement marked Grazioso, which I felt well represents the gentle spirit of the man for whom the work was written.
