Halil - Flute, Percussion, Piano

This work is dedicated "To the spirit of yadin and to his fallen brothers." The reference is to Yadin Tanenbaum, a 19-year-old Israeli flutist who, in 1973, at the height of his musical powers was killed in his tank in the Sinai. he would have been 27 years old at the time this piece was written.

Halil (the Hebrew word for "flute") is formally unlike any other work I have written, but is like much of my music in its struggle between tonal and non-tonal forces. In this case, I sense that struggle as involving wars and the threat of wars, the overwhelming desire to live, and the consolations of art, love and the hope for peace. It is a kind of night-music, which, from its opening 12-tone row to its ambiguously diatonic final cadence, is an ongoing conflict of nocturnal images: wish-dreams, nightmares, repose, sleeplessness, night-terrors and sleep itself, Death's twin brother.

I never knew Yadin Tanenbaum, but I know his spirit

-Leonard Bernstein