The intimate combination of flute and guitar has proven to be an attractive one for a number of composers -- and if the composer herself plays the flute, so much the better.

This music is from a four-movement suite for flute and guitar, entitled “Canyon Echoes,” written by the American composer and flutist Katherine Hoover. This music was premiered on today’s date in 1991 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis by flutist Susan Morris De Jong and guitarist Jeffrey Van.

Katherine Hoover gave her “Canyon Echoes” a subtitle: “An Apache Folktale.”

“This piece,” explained Hoover, “was inspired by a book called The Flute Player, a simple and beautifully illustrated retelling of an Apache folktale by Michael Lacapa. It is the story of two young Apaches from different areas of a large canyon. They meet at a Hoop Dance, and dance only with each other. The next day, as the girl works up on the side of the canyon in her father's fields, the boy sits below by a stream and plays his flute for her (flute-playing was a common manner of courtship). She puts a leaf in the stream which flows down to him, so he knows she hears.”

Like most legendary love stories, this Apache legend ends sadly, with the young lovers first separated, then rejoined, by death. A melancholy tale, perhaps, but one admirably suited to the introverted, dreamy tones of flute and guitar.