»Dedicated to Wolfgang Schulz«

For solo flute
Duration: ca. 7 minutes
Premiere: April 28, 2005, Arnold Schönberg Center (Vienna), played by Wolfgang Schulz

Published by Edition Contemp Art (Verlagsgruppe Hermann),
Obtainable via www.schott-music.com
Product number: VGH 1280-70

The Three Studies on Dreamy Moments were written in 1987 as preliminary studies for a concertante work for flute and string orchestra for Wolfgang Schulz, the solo flutist of the Vienna Philharmonic.

The work consists of three short pieces: a "Vivace dinamico" full of cascading figures, an "Espressivo ardente" that explores the flute's potential for different timbral possibilities, and, as a conclusion, a virtuosic "Capriccio eccentrico" that places great demands on articulation.

In this work, René Staar focuses primarily on harmonic structures reminiscent of the cadential formulations of tonality. This does not mean, however, that there is any relation to the major-minor functional harmony of late Romanticism; instead, these structures are permeated by the innovations of the Second Viennese School and the post-war avant-garde. 

These pieces belong to a series of works written between René Staar's first extended orchestral composition Just an Accident? (orchestral version 1985), and the start of the work on the Bagatelles on the Name of György Ligeti (1989-1996) as well as the first version of Metamorphoses of a Labyrinth op. 22a.

Just like Fragments of a Dream Play (one movement written in 1986), Da stehen wir mit Spiegeln … und fangen auf (two movements written in 1985), Vision: Cosmos for Organ (the first movement of a triptych, completed in 1987), and many others, the Studies on Dreamy Moments belong to the many compositions that remain in fragmentary form from the years between 1986 and 1991.