for unaccompanied flute
Herakles Fights the Stymphalian Birds.
Mrs. Lang, The All Sorts of Stories Book, ed. Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1911).
According to legend the stymphalian birds were man-eating birds with beaks of bronze, sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims, and poisonous dung. They were pets of Ares, the god of war. In order to escape a pack of wolves they migrated to a marsh in Arcadia where hey bred quickly and swarmed over the countryside, destroying crops, fruit trees, and townspeople.
The Stymphalian birds were defeated by the hero Hercules in his sixth labour for Eurytheus. AcHercules could not go into the marsh to reach the nests of the birds, as the ground would not support his weight. Athena, noticing the hero's plight, gave Hercules a rattle which Hephaestus had made especially for the occasion. Heracles shook the rattle and frightened the birds into the air. Hercules then shot many of them with arrows tipped with poisonous blood from the slain Hydra. The rest flew far away, never to plague Arcadia again. Hercules brought some of the slain birds to Eurystheus as proof of his success.
This piece for unaccompanied flute is my musical interpretation of these treacherous creatures. I envision them slowly stalking through the swampy reeds waiting for some poor, hopeless wanderer to stumble into the midst of their deathly nest.