Henri Sauguet

80 notes pour flûte

All his life, Sauguet had been in touch with artists of diμerent generations and backgrounds: composers of course, interpreters, choreographers and dancers, poets, actors, painters and decorators, film-makers… He often spoke of his many friendships as constituting, in his mind, a spiritual family, to which he had written many pages of occasion, tributes and testimonies (Prélude à une exposition de peinture, for a premiere at the Rive Gauche art-gallery in 1937; Toast pour Henry Barraud to celebrate his achievement within the French radio institutions, 80 notes clavecines, written for the 80th birthday of Wanda Landowska).

The "salon" of Henry and Isabel Goüin was famous between the two world- wars. It quickly became a home for the artists. In 1964 it turned into the still-existing Fondation Royaumont. Henri Sauguet meets there regularly the Goüins as well as Francis Poulenc, Nadia Boulanger, Jacques Février, Nora et Georges Auric, Hugues Cuenod…

The 80 notes pour flûte were written in February 1984 for Isabel Goüin "on the occasion of her four times twenty years".



(translation Philippe Do)