Robert Blocker, Dean
Julia Clancy viola Doctor of Musical Arts Degree Recital December 16, 2021 | 7:30 p.m. | Morse Recital Hall in Sprague Memorial Hall
Alfred Schnittke 1934–1998
Suite in the Old Style (1972) I. Pastorale II. Ballet III. Minuet IV. Fugue V. Pantomime Nenad Ivovic, piano
Jean Sibelius 1865–1957
Berceuse, Op. 79 Nenad Ivovic, piano
Zoltán Kodály 1882–1967
Cello Sonata, Op. 4 I. Fantasia. Allegro di molto II. Allegro con spirito Sophiko Simsive, piano intermission
Kenji Bunch b. 1973
Until Next Time (2010)
Rebecca Clarke 1886–1979
Morpheus (1917) Sophiko Simsive, piano
Paul Hindemith 1895–1963
Viola Sonata, Op. 11, No. 4 I. Fantasie II. Thema mit Variationen III. Finale (mit Variationen) Nenad Ivovic, piano
Alfred Schnittke, Suite in the Old Style, 1972 It is customary to begin a solo recital with an “old” (read: Baroque or Classical period) work and progress through the program chronologically. Perhaps it satis es our human proclivity to experience a beginning, middle, and end. A Baroque or Classical work will often be clear, bright, and relatively inviting; it serves to warm up the performer and audience for the succeedingly modern works. Had you not received this program booklet with the composer’s dates, you might very well assume you were hearing a work by Handel or Bach. Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style is a geniously crafted “counterfeit” of a Baroque masterpiece which, at rst, leaves very few traces of its postmodern origins. The opening pastorale is reminiscent of a scene from Handel’s Messiah or a movement of a Corelli Concerto Grosso. An experienced listener might detect the very subtle uncharacteristic phrase structures and unusually long sustained note in the solo string part in the opening pastorale, but before we have time to process the idiosyncrasies, we are thrust into the next movement, a lively “balletta.” This movement could certainly pass for an orchestral accompaniment to a Rameau dance-ballet; its rapid pace helps to obscure harmonies that don’t quite match the style. While the harmonies of the minuet remain mostly period-proper, Schnittke’s use of hemiola, an e ect that here give the impression of a duple, rather than triple meter, while not unprecedented in a Baroque minuet, present as jazzy and mysterious, rather than the expected courtly and elegant. The fugue, perhaps Schnittke’s most brilliant Baroque disguise, presents the unmistakable avor of a fugue, without technically being a bona de fugue. Normally, a fugue begins with a clear statement of a theme (also known as a “subject”), before other voices enter and complicate the texture. Here, the piano begins with a fragment of the material, more akin to a “tail” a jazz pianist might give a singer to help spark their memory for what’s to come. The fugue subject is eventually presented in the viola part, inviting a thrilling contrapuntal spin-o . It is not until about a minute into the pantomime that Schnittke’s veil is lifted. The strange, yet convincing replica shatters suddenly and dramatically as the viola hits and sustains for an uncomfortably long time one of the nastiest, most dissonant intervals possible on a string instrument: a minor second. In true absurdist fashion, Schnittke resolves this dissonance, repeats back to the beginning, and carries onward as if the piece’s true century had not been revealed. The work ends with a question mark rather than a period: the viola trills on a minor second, fading into silence.
Jean Sibelius, Berceuse, op. 79 (1915-1917) In 1914, Horatio Parker, professor of composition and dean of the Yale School of Music, invited Jean Sibelius on a tour of North America. The two months he spent in New York and at the Norfolk Music Festival were among the most enjoyable of the composer’s long life. Before this trip, Sibelius had su ered nancial turmoil, ill health, and what he believed to be type-casting as a Finnish nationalist composer, destined to always remain a side-show act to behemoths such as Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, or the prior generation’s idols: Brahms, Wagner and Bruckner. Though at the time, Sibelius had already experienced considerable success with his tone poem Finlandia, his rst three symphonies, and his violin concerto, his crushing self-criticism and longing for acceptance in traditional circles within the neo-romantic establishment were at constant odds with his desire to cultivate a unique, Nordic voice. In America, Sibelius bathed in praise: he completed a commission for an orchestral tone poem and received an honorary doctorate from Yale. This miniature from op. 79, a collection of short works for violin and piano, is steeped heavily in French impressionism. Its smoky and intimate lyricism would be at home in Parisian salons of the early 20th century, a milieu in which Sibelius yearned to be admired.
Zoltán Kodály: Cello Sonata, Op. 4, 1909-1910 Zoltán Kodály set out on his rst trip to the Hungarian countryside in 1905 on a mission to collect folk songs and record them on phonograph cylinders, establishing himself as one of the rst pioneers of ethnomusicology. A year later, he met fellow compatriot and composer, Bela Bartók, whom he introduced to his method of folk song collection. The two became lifelong friends and advocates for each other’s music. Despite this, Kodály seemed to always be cast in Bartok’s shadow: he was accused for many years of plagiarism, and su ered relentless public brow-beatings in the press. Bartók often vigorously defended his friend: "For some time past, certain musical circles have made it their special concern to play me o against Zoltán Kodály. They would like to make it appear that the friendship between us is being used by Kodály for his own pro t. This is a most stupid lie. Kodály is one of the most outstanding composers of our day. His art, like mine, has twin roots: it has sprung from Hungarian peasant soil and modern French music [Debussy]. But though our art has grown from this common soil, our works from the very beginning have been completely di erent ...It is possible that Kodály's music is not so 'aggressive' [as mine]...But it is precisely this essential di erence, reaching expression in his music as a completely new and original way of thinking, that makes his musical message so valuable … This man, to whom Hungarian culture owes so much, is attacked at every turn, sometimes by o cial circles, sometimes by 'critics'. They are determined to prevent him from being able to work in peace for the good of our
culture, and they do so while they, the incompetent, the idle and the nobodies, are proclaiming at the top of their voices the importance of maintaining the superiority of Hungarian culture.” The Cello Sonata, op. 4, today performed on the viola, begins in the murky depths of the low register, establishing the work’s key motive and rhapsodic air. In this movement, Kodály blends rubato recitative, Debussyian harmonies, and allusion to folk music. Rapid arpeggiated guration in the piano mimic the thrilling sounds of a slavic cimbalom Kodály claims to have drawn inspiration for the second movement’s opening theme from Beethoven, a composer with whom he shares a birthdate, today, December 16. The piano and string part alternate in stamping out short-winded modal phrases in a jubilant peasant dance. The return to the fantasia material at the end of the movement round out the work with a clean cyclic unity.
Kenji Bunch, Until Next Time, 2010 The concluding half of this program consists of works written by composers who have each contributed greatly to the viola repertoire owing in large part to their considerable skills on the instrument. Kenji Bunch, a living violist and composer, was the rst student in Juilliard’s history to complete a Bachelor’s degree in both viola performance and composition, a testament to his talent in both disciplines. He often premieres his own works for solo viola. Whereas Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style seeks to recreate a Baroque-era suite in quite a literal sense, Bunch’s Until Next Time instead borrows elements of Baroque-era performance techniques in the context of a modern, Celtic-inspired ballad. To start, he calls on the performer to tune the viola di erently (B, F#, B F#) from its standard (C, G, D, A) tuning, rendering the instrument exponentially more resonant. The practice of altering a stringed instrument’s tuning is called scordatura and was popular among composers during the Baroque period, particularly for those writing for solo violin. In the middle of the arc of his piece, Bunch borrows the popular Baroque technique of bariolage, an e ect for bowed instruments obtained by playing in rapid alternation upon open and stopped strings. After a period of bariolage slowly building in intensity, Bunch sets the performer free with a cadenza, an improvisational technique also common to the Baroque era. Bunch gives speci c directions to the performer, “Explore the sororities of this tuning (staying within the existing harmonic vocabulary.) Continue arpeggios or create new, fast gestures with decaying “echo” e ects (as if played with a delay pedal). Gradually increase in volume and activity, eventually leading back to cadence in the following bar.” Although the title, the dedication (for “Neil”), and the performance direction ( to play “wistfully”), imbues a bittersweet sense of nostalgia, Bunch wrote of the work: “I left an open cadenza in the middle because I wanted to create a space for something unique to occur in every performance of the
piece. In this sense, the title suggests the piece will exist in a slightly di erent way until the next time it is played.”
Rebecca Clarke: Morpheus, 1917 At a young age, Rebecca Clarke was banished from her home by her father after years of a turbulent relationship. Clarke supported herself in London as a violist, and moved to the United States to continue her performance career. She premiered Morpheus in New York City’s Aeolian Hall in 1918 under the pseudonym of "Anthony Trent,” alongside other works that she wrote without a pseudonym. Clarke feared backlash from a program featuring her name as a composer too frequently. The media o ered light praise of the works by Clarke; it loudly applauded the works by “Anthony Trent.” A few years later, after her music began to be published, Clarke wrote: “I killed Anthony Trent-- o cially and with no regrets - I’ve never been bothered with him since! … Well, now in America it seems to me that a woman really has equal chances with a man… It’s true that up to now there has not been a woman Bach or a Woman Beethoven. Personally I don’t think it matters two straws who writes the music as long as we get it. But the soil is now prepared. And I can see no reason why we shouldn’t some day have a really great woman composer. We don’t know what her name will be. But I think she will come, and I think it’s quite likely she may be from America.” Morpheus, a short, lyrical piece alludes to the Greek god Morpheus, son of Hypnos, the god of dreams. Like Kodály, she borrows Debussyian harmonies and writes a piano part that recalls another instrument: this time it is the harp. The pianist glides against the black keys of the piano while wading through the work’s main theme in the lower register. The viola part recalls a Debussyian ute line in its short cadenza.
Paul Hindemith: Viola Sonata op. 11 no. 4 (1919) 1919 was a formative year for the viola. It was the year in which Hindemith requested to be switched from the violin to the viola section at the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra. With his newfound interest in the viola that year, he wrote op. 11 no. 4, and no. 5, sonatas for viola and piano, and solo viola respectively. Hindemith premiered some of his op. 10 and op. 11 works himself in Frankfurt that year in a performance received warmly by the press. Tully Potter wrote of Hindemith,
“We who love the sound of strings often lament the passing of the old-style virtuoso composer. But in looking for another Paganini, Vieuxtemps or Wieniawski let us not overlook Hindemith who, almost alone, continued the tradition into the twentieth century … Through his compositions, Hindemith helped to make up some of the ground the viola had lost in the nineteenth century.” Meanwhile, across the ocean, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, an American pianist, champion of American chamber music, and nancier of the very concert hall you’re sitting in for today’s performance, announced the second annual Berkshire Festival Competition for chamber music composition. The jury whittled the entry pool down to two: a viola sonata by an unknown “Anthony Trent” and a suite for viola and piano by Ernest Bloch. The jury was tied until Mrs. Coolidge broke the tie in favor of Ernest Bloch’s suite. It was later revealed that Trent was a pseudonym for Rebecca Clarke, much to the shock of the jury members, who felt such a work could not possibly have been written by a woman. Both Clarke and Hindemith would continue on to concertize on the viola and compose works that pushed the technical and expressive potential of the viola as a solo instrument. This work is among the last Hindemith would write in a ercely romantic style. His music took a decidedly more expressionist turn in the 1920s. As an academic, teaching for a brief period at the Yale School of Music, Hindemith was accustomed to accusations of writing in a dry and prosaic style. This sonata’s unusual form, alluding to the genre of the Fantasie Sonata cultivated by Romantic composers, begins with a short introductory movement. The opening melody sings like Brahms atop a kaleidoscopic, coloristic string of harmonies. A cadenza-like passage leads to the rst variation movement, built on a theme styled like a folk melody. The nal movement explores the folk melodies with increasing bipolarity: in one moment the viola soars tenderly over a trickling piano accompaniment, the next it prickles in an angular fugato, until it races to a frenetic, yet triumphant end.