Other Quality Items Included

for flute ensemble 

(Duration: 7 minutes)

I encountered the line “Other Quality Items Included” on a vending machine dispensing fidget spinners inside a plastic capsule, and it appeared written underneath pictures of spinners, which sold at 75 cents.

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I initially considered the statement somewhat disingenuous: How can undisclosed items be added-on to a randomly selected 75-cent toy “of (good) quality”? Also why are these listed as “items”? Are those products so insignificant that they don’t fit into a better category, like “action figures”, or “toys”? or why can’t they be disclosed? Are the spinners so un-attractive that some surprise is needed to produce interest?

 

Other Quality Items Included, for flute ensemble, explores the notion of the physical and mental layout of the products described above: inside a capsule there is a known object and also there is an undisclosed additional object, promised to be significant.

 

Understood this way, ostinatos are the capsule, or enclosure that supports the main musical materials (themes?), but there is an undisclosed element that may intrude in the piece. We don’t really know whether this undisclosed additional object is “of quality” or it is just an intrusion. Perhaps is not even significant enough to be noticed.
Can we agree––at least–– on what that object is?