Flibbertigibbet for Two
Oboes, Two Clarinets, Two Bassoons and Two Horns
Mark Sforzini (born in 1969)
Composed in 2006.
Premiered on October 26, 2006 in Clearwater,
Florida by members of The Florida Orchestra.
A
“flibbertigibbet,”
according to the Oxford English
Dictionary, is “a chattering or gossiping person.” The OED traces the word’s origin to “an onomatopoeic representation of
unmeaning chatter” during the 16th century; Shakespeare used it in King Lear (1605) to indicate a demonic
possession. Oscar Hammerstein wove the word into the lyrics for the song Maria from The Sound Of Music in 1959 (How do you
find a word that means Maria? A flibbertigibbet! A will-o’-the wisp! A clown!), and Mark Sforzini found
it a fitting title for his new piece commissioned by The Florida Orchestra
after encountering it recently in a passage from Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven by Alabama author Fannie Flagg. In
Flagg’s humorous and loving novel, an octogenarian couple has fulfilled the
husband’s wish to sell their life-long home in Missouri to move to Vero Beach,
but after a few months there he “drops the bomb” that he is thinking about
going back. “All I heard out of you for years,” his disbelieving spouse
replies, “was, ‘I can’t wait until we move to Florida.’ Now we have no home, no
winter clothes, we can’t go back. What will people think? They will think we’re
a bunch of flibbertigibbets, that’s what, moving here and there, like a caravan
of Gypsies.” Sforzini caught a bit of the spirit of that conversation in his music,
and also perhaps a memory of meeting the author in 1980, when she appeared on
the TV game show To Tell the Truth
and quizzed him about his accomplishments as the World Hula Hoop Champion of 1979.
--program notes by Richard Rodda