Eleanor Hovda

for flute, clarinet in Bb, violin, viola, violoncello, piano, and percussion

ca. 14'42"

For the Boston Musica Viva, Richard Pittman, music director

Click here to view the score.

Click here to view revised performance notes.

Click here to view clarinet fingerings by E. Michael Richards, from The Clarinet of the Twenty-First Century, 2nd ed.

Click here to hear a recording by the Prism Players on the Eleanor Hovda Collection CD on Spotify.

Eleanor Hovda

for flute, clarinet in Bb, violin, grand piano, and crotales

ca. 12'40"

Commissioned by the Atlanta Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, California EAR Unit, and Boston Musica Viva through the Meet the Composer/Readers Digest Commissioning Program

Click here to view the score.

Click here to view an addendum related to pages 4 - 11.

Click here to hear a recording by the California EAR Unit on Spotify.

Eleanor Hovda

for soprano, flute, cello, and bowed piano

ca. 12'14" 

Song in High Grasses is written for Charlotte Regni, and is made around a yodel-like call which she learned as a child living in Zaire, Africa. The piece is a sonic visualization of an imaginary outdoor space with tall grasses, large plants, warm winds, and somnulant insects, birds, and beasts. The call-song floats around and dances with the ambience of wind, rustling grasses, and creature sounds.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to listen to the recording by the Prism Players on the Eleanor Hovda Collection CD (Spotify).

Eleanor Hovda

for chamber orchestra

ca. 13'45"

This piece was commissioned by the Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra.

This project was supported in part through funding from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Click here to view the score with composer's notes.

Click here to view the score with conductor's notes.

Click here to listen to the recording by the Prism Players on the Eleanor Hovda Collection CD (Spotify).

Eleanor Hovda

for flute, B-flat clarinet, violin, and cello

Click here to view the score.

Eleanor Hovda

for clarinet, electric guitar, cello, doublebass, and percussion

ca. 13'30"

"Mountain Goat File is made for the Bang on a Can All-Stars. It is a piece from other pieces, because BOAC All-Stars wanted to perfrom an already-extant piece, and I decided to make a piece where the new ideas would be the combination of instruments and the overall form, but the specific music for each instrument would be borrowed from other pieces. My task was to work with already-extant material in a new format. Mountain Goat File, as a title, comes from a file I have in my computer for things that relate tangentally or, only if one makes a huge conceptual leaps from one place to another. I have been interested for some time in "journey music" - music that deals with testing boundaries, traversing shifiting landscapes and projecting evolving fields of energy. Mountain Goat File leaps, rather than shifts, from pinnacle to pinnacle. Sometimes it is isolated and slippery there, and sometimes it is a sociable plateau."

Click here to view the score.

Click here to listen to a recording by Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Eleanor Hovda

for flute, oboe, bassoon, violin, and cello

For the Sylmar Chamber Ensemble, with gratitude to the McKnight Foundation

This piece is a very introspective probing of "the secret life" of the winds and strings. It resonates hollow places and takes long lengths of time to excavate and articulate the "sound around the sound."

Click here to view the score.

Eleanor Hovda

for flute, clarinet, violin, and cello

Click here to view the score.