11.19.23 Brendan Travers, Viola

Student Recital Series Sara M. Snell Music Theater

2023 – 2024 Season Sunday, November 19th at 1:15 PM

Brendan Travers, viola Julie Miller, piano Elegy (2005)

Gregory Wanamaker (b. 1968) Adam Schwind, Ricky Chui, violins Mirabel Sasiela, cello

Sonata for Viola and Piano Op. 147 (1975) I. Moderato III. Adagio Sonata for Viola and Piano (1918-19) Impetuoso Vivace Adagio

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975)

Rebecca Clarke (1886 – 1979)

Brendan Travers is from the studio of Ryan Hardcastle This program is presented to fulfill the senior recital requirement for the Bachelor of Music degree in Performance

Program Notes Elegy (2005) “Elegy is an arrangement for string quartet of the second movement (also titled elegy) of my Duo Sonata for clarinet and saxophone. Elegy in its first version was written in memory of those who died in the tragedy on September 11, 2001.

The current version exists for all those who wish to remember a loved one lost for any reason. The work is a strictly white-note Aeolian work based on very simple motives.” - Gregory Wanamaker This performance of “Elegy” is in memory of Jack Sheehan (2003-2022) and Laura Lyktey (1963-2023) About the Composer Equally at home composing in solitude or collaborating with other artists, Gregory Wanamaker creates music that is at times lyrically expressive while at others athletically virtuosic. His eclectic sound world responds in kind to a variety of extra-musical influences ranging from the simplicity of a still life painting, the emotions of a dramatic narrative, the graceful or angular lines of a landscape, or the visceral discourse of the moment.

Wanamaker’s music has been described as “pure gold, shot through with tenderness and grace” (San Francisco Chronicle), “achingly beautiful” (Palm Beach Daily News), "deeply romantic yet unsentimental” (I Care If You Listen), and “a technical tour de force” (Fanfare).

Gregory’s earliest musical training began at age 6 in professional summer stock theater companies, and continued through both schooled and self-guided explorations through the American folk music of the 1960s, bebop and free jazz, and Western classical music of the late 20th century. He continues his study of sounds to those from around the world, to draw from a variety of musics to inform his continually evolving voice.

The creation of his music has been supported by The National Endowment for the Arts and The New York State Council on the Arts in addition to several private organizations as well as individual, and consortium commissions by performing musicians and ensembles from around the world. His music has been performed in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall and Weiner Konzerthaus to the most intimate spaces on university campuses and museums by soloists and ensembles including Timothy McAllister, Akropolis Reed Quintet, Arno Bornkamp, Donald George, Henri Bok, PRISM Quartet, Capitol Quartet, Masato Kumoi Quartet, The Society for New Music, Ensemble du Bout du Monde, Jean-Michel Goury, The Trujillo Symphony Orchestra, and The Orchestra of Northern New York among many others.

Wanamaker has closely collaborated with visual artists Carrie Mae Weems and Meggie George, choreographers Cheryl Wilkins-Mitchell and Guy Thorne, and more frequently, the writer and director Garth Bardsley with whom he has created several works from intimate art songs to large works for chorus and orchestra for children and professionals alike. In addition, he created effects music for the film Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, produced by The Asylum for release on the Syfy Channel.

His recent album Light and Shadows, Waves and Time features 21 musicians from around the globe in world premiere recordings of 8 of his recent chamber works. Released by Navona Records, his discography also spans several other commercial labels including Naxos, innova, Equilibrium, Albany, Centaur, Blue Griffin, Soundset, Mark Custom, White Pine, and Summit.

Gregory Wanamaker is Professor Emeritus of Composition at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam where he served from 1997 to 2023. He studied composition with William Averitt, Thomas Albert, Anthony Branker and Ladislav Kubík. He proudly publishes his own music, which is available exclusively through his website at www.gregorywanamaker.com.

Sonata for Viola and Piano Op. 147 (1975) “The Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147, was Dmitri Shostakovich’s final work. The score was completed on July 5, 1975, a day before the composer entered the hospital where, just over a month later, he would succumb to the effects of terminal heart disease and lung cancer. Shostakovich seems to have considered the Viola Sonata to be a final farewell. All three of its movements conclude with the instruction, morendo, or “dying away.” The Sonata moves into the mysterious, quietly transcendent territory of Beethoven’s late string quartets.

Shostakovich described the first movement (Moderato) as “a novella.” It begins with a solitary pizzicato line in the viola which echoes the opening of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto. The piano’s entrance brings a haunting chromatic statement which stands in stark contrast with the viola’s open intervals. Entering into a sometimes wrenching dialogue, both voices wander through a gloomy, alien landscape. A fragment of the DSCH motif (without the concluding B natural) emerges in the piano’s bass line. This is the musical cryptogram, imprinted relentlessly in so much of Shostakovich’s music, which outlines the composer’s initials using the German alphabet. As the movement continues, the intensity builds with ferocious, percussive tones in the piano meeting the viola’s impassioned cries of anguish. A viola cadenza becomes a lamenting and sardonic soliloquy. With a brief return of the opening pizzicato, the final, spine-chilling bars tiptoe into the night.

Shostakovich referred to the final movement, written in just two days, as “an Adagio in memory of Beethoven,” or “Adagio in Memory of a Great Composer.”

Quotes of the iconic arpeggios which open Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata emerge, as if in a dream. Again, there is a cadenza in which the viola is heard as a solitary voice. In the middle of the movement, Shostakovich seems to be bidding farewell to his own works. In sequence, quotes emerge from the Second Violin Concerto and all fifteen of Shostakovich’s symphonies. On the final page, there is another self-quotation. It is the main theme of a Suite for two pianos, Op. 6, written by the sixteen-year-old composer and dedicated to the memory of his father.”1

Timothy Judd, “Shostakovich’s Viola Sonata: A Farewell,” web log, The Listeners’ Club (blog), March 24, 2023, https://thelistenersclub.com/2023/03/24/shostakovichs-viola-sonata-a-farewell/#more-16562.

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Sonata for Viola and Piano (1918-19) The score of Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata is headed by the following quote from Alfred de Musset’s La Nuit de Mai (1835): Poète, prends ton luth; le vin de la jeunesse Fermente cette nuit dans les veines de Dieu.

Poet, take up your lute; the wine of youth this night is fermenting in the veins of God.

“My Viola Sonata was written almost sixty years ago-fifty-eight, to be exact.

The first sketches were made during the winter of 1918-1919 while I was in Honolulu, playing in a series of chamber concerts. The viola was my instrument…and when I heard that a thousand-dollar prize for a viola sonata was being offered by Mrs. Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge I thought I would try my hand at one.

The work was completed in Detroit during the spring and summer of 1919, while I was on a visit to a brother of mine. From there it was mailed, under a pseudonym, to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where the Coolidge festivals were held in those days.

The competition was an international one, and I heard later that some seventythree compositions were sent in from various parts of the world. These were boiled down to ten, and ultimately to two. At the finals a jury of six distinguished musicians divided their votes equally between these two works. (One, they were reported to have said, was work of a philosopher; the other, that of a poet.) A second round of votes followed; but the result remained obstinately the same. Finally, Mrs. Coolidge herself was called on to give the casting vote. ‘I voted for the one that seemed to me to be the finer of the two,’ she told me that evening at a friend’s house where I was staying in Pittsfield. After her decision, the sealed envelope containing the composer’s name was opened, and it proved to be that of Ernest Bloch. The work was his Suite for Viola and Piano.

According to the rules of the contest, only the envelope of the winner was supposed to be opened. But the jury, claiming that as there had been a tie the name of the composer of the runner-up should also be disclosed, asked to have the second envelope opened. ‘And,’ said Mrs. Coolidge, for the first time looking straight at me, ‘You should have seen their faces when they saw it was by a woman!’

Nowadays there are so many fine composers who are women that it is hard to realize that in those far-off times women composers were very few. For that reason my sonata, played at the 1919 Festival by Louis Bailly and Harold Bauer, received a good deal of publicity; it was far more of an honor to me to have tied with Bloch than if I had won the prize. Indeed, my admiration for Bloch’s work was such that I would have been really upset if the prize had gone to me.

An amusing sidelight, underlining the status of women composers at the time, was that certain reports reached me averring that I had not written my own work, or that it had been helped by other composers, among whom, ironically, Bloch himself was named. I even once received a press clipping stating that Rebecca Clarke was a pseudonym for someone else-in other words that I did not exist. So I take this opportunity to emphasize that I do indeed exist; that I can even lay claim to dual nationality, because though I was born and brought up in England my father was an American, thus automatically giving me American citizenship; and, finally, that my Viola Sonata is my own unaided work!”2 “The sonata is in three movements consisting of two substantial movements separated by a slighter scherzo. The impassioned opening rhapsody reflects the mood of the literary motto given it by the composer and it introduces various elements which recur, notably a motif of four semiquavers. The central scherzo is a spectral jig, its nocturnal character enhanced by the violist’s pizzicati, harmonics and glissandi. The wide-spanning, seemingly serene opening to the finale has the stature of a slow movement on its own account. The viola’s heartfelt incantations twice hint at the passion burning beneath the surface, but each time the quiet reverie returns, and eventually gives way to a remarkable passage where the solo viola sustains a pianissimo tremolando on the open C string, while above it a single decorated piano line sings, becoming more and more decorated and agitated and leading into the busy, driving music of the Allegro. After a slow interlude eventually the opening movement’s semiquaver motif signals our journey is over and with the return of material from the opening comes the emphatic closing bars.”3

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Program note written by Rebecca Clarke for a 1977 performance of Sonata for Viola and Piano (1918-19).

Foreman, Lewis. Liner notes for A Portrait of the Viola.