The Girl with the Flaxen Hair for Wind Quintet

Debussy's The Girl with the Flaxen Hair is an endearing piece and a great introduction to the musical world of Debussy. Every piano player would most probably be familiar with this piece, but not necessarily wind players. However, with this arrangement for Wind Quintet, the expressive voices of this piano piece are further explored by the colours of the Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn and Bassoon. The opening solo is deliberately given to the flute, paying homage to another iconic piece of Debussy's, Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune, which opens with a lower register flute solo starting with the same note Db. Conscious decisions were also made to give the phrases in bars 12-13 and 15-16 with larger melodic spreads to the Clarinet, whose expressive qualities across these ranges suit these phrases particularly well. The revisiting of the theme in bar 28, this time in a higher register, was deliberately given to the Oboe and not the flute (not every high register melodies needs to be assigned to the flute). Oboe's higher registers, when played delicately to the point of almost struggling to hang on to the higher notes, suit the sweetness (tre doux) of the solo passage particularly well. Not to forget the characteristic Debussy harmonies that is fully supported and suited to be powered by the French Horn and Bassoon. These lower voices provide the harmonic engine that powers this unmistakable Debussy sound. Truly, this arrangement is a challenge and masterclass in tone colour for the Wind Quintet that demands a simultaneous homogeneity, as well as balance that brings out the Debussy sound, yet allowing each of the characteristics of the Wind instruments to shine through.