The word "Ventalia" means "fan" in Greek (cf the French "éventail"). This title has a number of connotations. The flautist "fans out" from alto flute in the opening section via flute (a section incorporating a brief Passacaglia) to piccolo and back. (The flute part incorporates a device known inelegantly as the "glissando headjoint" that allows for glissandi between more or less widely-spaced pitches.) The pitch structure systematises to some degree a method of intervallic expansion and contraction that I've been elaborating over several years. More subjectively, although for me just as tangibly, work on the piece coincided with research for a project based on the fans that Oskar Kokoschka painted for Alma Mahler. This entailed reading and re-reading Kokoschka's play "Orpheus und Eurydike", a translation into mythical terms of his affair with Alma. While my piece is in no sense a programmatic depiction of the play's action, I've no doubt that it evokes something of its febrile atmosphere.
Ventalia was composed in late 2006 to a commission from Bill Dowdall and David Adams, funded by The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíone. Bill and David are also its dedicatees.
								Raymond Deane (August 2007)