KNELLS FOR BONNIE
“Puckett should be a household word.”
Parterre Box
flute and chamber winds and percussion
8 minutes
commissioned by the University of Kansas
SCORING
Flute soloist
Flute I
Oboe I-II
B-flat Clarinets I-II
Bassoon I-II
Horn in F I-II
Trumpet in C I-II (bubble mute throughout)
Bass Trombone (bubble mute throughout)
Percussion (2 players): Chimes, Crotales (low C and high C), Vibraphone, Marimba (All instruments are shared)
Piano
Double Bass
PROGRAM NOTE
“Just to know that the war is officially over is good news to ours ears because on the back of this is the thought of having world wide peace again. Let us hope and pray that in case of another war, it will be a long way off.”
My grandfather wrote those words from Tokyo Bay, Japan on September 2, 1945. Before he entered shipped out in 1944, he had been a baseball player with an eye for fast cars and fun. Following his discharge from the U. S. Navy, he spent the next seventy years preaching love and forgiveness all across the American south.
He and I never talked politics, we never talked religion, and certainly never talked about WWII. But we often talked about living a life of service to others using whatever gifts we have in the service of something greater than ourselves.
As with so many of his generation, I never heard a word about his life in 1944-45 and what, if anything, specifically happened to shape his post-war vision of a well-lived life. But upon rereading his letter
from seventy years ago, I can’t help but reflect upon the sadness he must have felt watching each one of those years pass only to realize that the world wide peace he hoped he had helped earn is still somehow beyond our collective selves.
Rest In Peace, Granddaddy