CONCERTOFORVIOLAANDORCHESTRA –WILLIAMWALTON(1929)
Sir William Walton (1902-1983) is a noted composer of the twentieth century. Raised as a choirboy in the Anglican church, he studied at Oxford for six years, ultimately without a degree, before embarking on his career in composition. He was heavily influenced by Italian lyricism, encountered on a trip taken with the Sitwell siblings Sacheverell, Osbert, and Edith, who were friends, patrons, writers, and poets. In fact, Walton’s first success as a composer came from the siblings, with his Façade suite written as incidental music to a series of poems by Edith Sitwell. Walton, however, fashioned much of his career around film scoring, composing for patriotic films through World War II. After the war, Walton did not achieve much new success, mostly due to the musical aesthetics changed around him while his own style remained unchanged.
The Concerto for Viola was originally written in 1929, then further revised: the solo part in 1938 and the orchestral accompaniment in 1961. The concerto was originally dedicated to Lionel Tertis, but the violist declined the work; violist and composer Paul Hindemith instead premiered the work in 1929. The concerto marked a major development in Walton’s style, taking in influences from his contemporaries, especially from Prokofiev. He did so to the point of near-direct copying of his friends’ works: he admitted to copying bars from Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 5, and many parallels can be made between Walton’s concerto and Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1. The concerto is of an unusual form, starting and ending with slow movements and featuring a fast and technical second movement. This is an inversion of the typical fast-slow-fast formula utilized since the Baroque period.
The first movement of the concerto is a narrative, recitative-like piece. It opens with a mournful melody, eventually dancing and soaring. The soloist, it seems, cannot break free from the moody and the melancholy, for when spirits rise in the piece, they cannot help but fall again. Walton’s use of expressive dissonance in the orchestra serves to underscore this depression in the solo, which seems to deflate at the end of the movement.
The second movement features quick and driving rhythms in the accompaniment, laying the foundation for a light and brilliant solo part. Here is where Walton notes the borrowing from Hindemith, with borrowings of Stravinsky being heard as well. Note the abundance of harmonics, which have a clear, almost “glassy” sound, made by lightly touching the finger to the string.
The last movement of the concerto immediately opens with the first theme, stated in the bassoon before being copied by the soloist, who then expands on it. This theme sets the material for the rest of the movement as Walton continuously returns to it, almost never stating it the same way twice. In the coda, Walton brings back the opening theme of the first movement to tie together the entire concerto. He does so by overlaying the third movement's theme (this time as an ostinato in the low voices) with the first movement’s theme in the solo.
(1936)
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) was a German violist, composer, and theorist known for his Neo-Classical and Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) style. The aim for these styles was to incorporate elements from the contrapuntal Baroque and pared-back Classical periods into the modern musical developments of the late Romantic period. The early part of Hindemith’s compositional career, after his involvement in World War I as a German soldier, was spent championing these new styles. Out of this came Kammermusik, a series of concertos frequently compared to Bach’s well-known Brandenburg Concertos. Kammermusik No. 5, mentioned above, was written for the viola. Hindemith also wrote a major concerto, Der Schwanendreher (The Swan Turner), for viola and orchestra in 1935. Hindemith was a controversial figure in Nazi Germany, ultimately emigrating to Switzerland and the US in the late 1930s.
Traveling to London for what was supposed to be the British premiere of Der Schwanendreher in January 1936, Hindemith’s concert with the BBC Symphony was canceled due to King George V’s death and the subsequent obligation to only provide music relating to his death. Wishing to still perform, Hindemith composed Trauermusik in 6 hours for viola and orchestra. Translated as “Mourning Music,” the piece is written in four abbreviated movements played continuously. The last movement quotes Bach’s deathbed chorale, “Für deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit” (“I am here before your throne”), a text which Hindemith writes is “very suitable for kings.” Unbeknownst to him, the tune was popular in England under the name “The Old Hundred,” and it remains a popular tune today. It appears helpfully in the top voice of the accompaniment, although masked with Hindemith’s brand of intricate, chromatic counterpoint.
SONATAFORVIOLAANDPIANO –REBECCACLARKE(1919)
English composer and violist Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) grew up in England in a musical, albeit abusive, family. With the financial support of her father, she studied at the Royal Academy of Music and then the Royal College of Music; however, she was unable to complete a degree after she was abruptly cut off from her family. She supported herself with her viola playing, becoming the one of the first women to play in a fully professional ensemble: she was admitted in 1912 to the Queen’s Hall Orchestra, the first woman to do so. Clarke spent some years in the US, touring and composing under the patronage of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge once again, Clarke was Coolidge’s sole female client. It was during this period that Clarke began to gain notoriety as a composer with the Viola Sonata, Piano Trio, and the Rhapsody for Cello and Piano.
Her Viola Sonata was composed to compete in the 1919 Berkshire Festival of Chamber Music in Massachusetts, a contest sponsored by Coolidge. This piece was runner-up to a Ernest Bloch composition, with some believing Clarke’s name a pseudonym of Bloch. Some guessed the piece came from French impressionist Maurice Ravel, owing to the impressionist sound that she adopted. Indeed, she was clearly influenced by the similarly impressionist music of Claude Debussy and compatriot Ralph Vaughan-Williams. The sonata is one of a handful of Romantic compositions for the viola, and also inverts the expected form of a sonata, having a slow-fast-slow structure instead of the normal fast-slow-fast. Clarke inscribes the score with an excerpt from Alfred de Musset’s “La Nuit de Mai”:
Poet, take your lute; the wine of youth ferments this evening in God’s veins
The Sonata opens heroically with an improvisatory cadenza, before slipping into the first theme. Clarke’s impressionist style often utilizes extended and expansive harmony and voicing to create a sonic landscape, and requires a different sound from the musicians to fully exploit: where Walton and Hindemith (stemming from more Germanic traditions) require a fuller and “meatier” sound, impressionist music needs a lighter, more sensual sound to embody the landscape. Clarke’s harmony tends to be slower-moving than Walton or Hindemith, again aiding the creation of a larger sonic experience. This remains true even in her fast second movement, which requires a muted viola, to create another different timbre. The harmonies remain more static despite the motion. Clarke ends the sonata by returning to the opening motive, with similar fireworks to the opening creating an exciting end.