Dance Music for Elfrid Ide (1940)

The instrumentation for this work’s three movements (I. [Fast] - II. - III. [With spirit]) are hand clap, block, 6 tom toms, claves, cowbells, and rattle (first movement); toy piano, muted gongs, slide whistle, cymbal, bass drum, low tom tom, and ratchet (second movement); and piano, claves, and slapstick (third movement). The work was rediscovered within the holdings of the Mills College music library in 2006, then edited and prepared for publication by Don Gillespie. It was written for the dancer Elfrid Ide (1917-93), daughter of the New England composer Chester Ide (1878-1944, a composer of primarily American art songs), and likely first performed on her Thesis Dance Concert. Ide entitled her choreography Wheel of Circumstance, and its three movements “Quest,” “The Rift Between,” and “Song in Counterpoint.”