Animal Flute Duets for Beginner to Intermediate Flutists with Play-Along CD.

Animal Flute Duets for Beginner to Intermediate Flutists with Play-Along CD, by Diana Sanders and Pete Regan. Distributed by Carl Fischer Music/Theodore Presser Company, 2008. www.carlfischer.com/www.presser.com; published by Falls House Press, www.fallshousepress.com; 23 pp. $29.95.

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Take 15 animals and set them to music as simple flute duets. Then add a CD with electronic accompaniment of keyboards and guitars. Arrange that CD so that it has four playing possibilities: the complete set, with both flutes and accompaniment; flute 1 and accompaniment; flute 2 and accompaniment; and accompaniment only. Include, for each piece, several instructions concerning dynamics, ornaments and tuning suggestions. Package it attractively. The result is a splendid idea that should be appealing to beginning and intermediate students.

The melodic and harmonic content is not especially memorable or individual; however, and there are a few things that puzzled me: why diagram the explanation of triplets in eighth notes when the piece presents them in quarter notes? Why repeat dynamic explanations (p, mf, f, etc.) for each piece in which they occur, but omit any explanation for indicated mordents and turns? There is a chart that shows which tracks on the CD give each of the four options for each piece, but I found myself jumping all over the 60 tracks, as each set is consecutive for one option; if a student is working on the first piece, he has to go from track 1 (full performance) to 16 (flute 1 plus accompaniment) to 31 (flute 2 plus accompaniment) to 46 (accompaniment only). As students would study a piece at a time, why not put all four options consecutively for each piece? I found the book most beneficial as sight-reading pieces (with accompaniment, going straight through the book) for intermediate students.--Reviewed by Susan S. Goodfellow, NCTM, The University of Utah