Viola Sonata Research Articles

The Specifics of the Timbral Embodiment of the Figurative & Emotional Sphere in Dmitri Shostakovich's 'Viola Sonata'

The object of the study is the Sonata for Viola and Piano Op. 147 by Dmitri Shostakovich—a work rightfully considered autobiographical and as a farewell. The subject of the study was the specificity of the timbral embodiment of the composition’s figurative and emotional sphere. In the proposed reading, the first part of the sonata is an image of the world to which the composer sends a farewell glance, the second is a sarcastic sketch of bright collective images of the vices of humanity, and the finale is a penetration beyond reality. The author of the article, in detail, referring to specific musical examples given in the text, examines the specific instrumental techniques used by the composer, which made it possible to embody the mystical concept of the sonata. The novelty of the research lies in the identification of three main figurative lines of the composition: eternity, the voice of the soul, and the world, which correspond to different timbral characteristics of the viola, which received their definitions through the use of specific expressive techniques. Eternity is the dispassionate sound of the viola, which is characterized by some programming, inexorability (an allusion to the "knock of fate”), monotonous figuration, and long double notes in the lower part of the range. The voice of the soul is detached, with the dark, gloomy coloring of the sound: melodica, devoid of "beautiful" intonations, sentimental singing, "Beethoven" trio in new refraction, acting as the personification of the otherworldly. The world is a tearing and sharp sound and sarcastic caricature of colors: glissando with access to the flageolet, short caustic foreshocks, exaggeratedly sharp staccato, ascending parallel quarts in sixteenth, illustrating a hysterical burst of laughter. The main figurative spaces coexist throughout the composition, presenting in the sonata genre a new specific characteristic of the viola for the first time, which interprets the world of unreal images in many ways. Shostakovich's sonata is defined as the starting point of the formation of the leading figurative direction of the viola repertoire of the last third of the twentieth century, which secured the viola the role of a guide to the world of the beyond—a kind of Virgil.

The Specifics of the Timbral Embodiment of the Figurative & Emotional Sphere in Dmitri Shostakovich's 'Viola Sonata'

The object of the study is the Sonata for Viola and Piano Op. 147 by Dmitri Shostakovich—a work rightfully considered autobiographical and as a farewell. The subject of the study was the specificity of the timbral embodiment of the composition’s figurative and emotional sphere. In the proposed reading, the first part of the sonata is an image of the world to which the composer sends a farewell glance, the second is a sarcastic sketch of bright collective images of the vices of humanity, and the finale is a penetration beyond reality. The author of the article, in detail, referring to specific musical examples given in the text, examines the specific instrumental techniques used by the composer, which made it possible to embody the mystical concept of the sonata. The novelty of the research lies in the identification of three main figurative lines of the composition: eternity, the voice of the soul, and the world, which correspond to different timbral characteristics of the viola, which received their definitions through the use of specific expressive techniques. Eternity is the dispassionate sound of the viola, which is characterized by some programming, inexorability (an allusion to the "knock of fate”), monotonous figuration, and long double notes in the lower part of the range. The voice of the soul is detached, with the dark, gloomy coloring of the sound: melodica, devoid of "beautiful" intonations, sentimental singing, "Beethoven" trio in new refraction, acting as the personification of the otherworldly. The world is a tearing and sharp sound and sarcastic caricature of colors: glissando with access to the flageolet, short caustic foreshocks, exaggeratedly sharp staccato, ascending parallel quarts in sixteenth, illustrating a hysterical burst of laughter. The main figurative spaces coexist throughout the composition, presenting in the sonata genre a new specific characteristic of the viola for the first time, which interprets the world of unreal images in many ways. Shostakovich's sonata is defined as the starting point of the formation of the leading figurative direction of the viola repertoire of the last third of the twentieth century, which secured the viola the role of a guide to the world of the beyond—a kind of Virgil.

EXPLORING THE NARRATIVE OF AGING THROUGH MUSIC

Abstract With increasing interest in exploring narratives of aging through literary/oral sources, a less prominent area of inquiry has been possibilities afforded by narratives inherent in music across the life-span and into later-life. Two possible areas of interest are the arc of development and change over the life-course, and inherent content of the music. The latter element is less prominent in narrative analysis, providing a potentially rich field of discovery. While popular song parallels these possibilities, further opportunities arise from instrumental, orchestral and operatic music, allied to strengths in musicological analysis. Later compositions whose elements provide insights into life course review (Shostakovich Viola Sonata and Metamorphosen, Richard Strauss) as well as romantic love in later life across generations (The Cunning Little Vixen, Leos Janáček). The analysis will seek to delineate to possible avenues of interpretation of musicological analysis in understanding the phenomenology and opportunities arising from aging.

Viola Sonata by Dmitri Shostakovich in the Art Space of Performance Interpretation

The paper discusses the Sonata for Viola and Piano op. 147 (1975) by Dmitri Shostakovich in order to generalize the aspects of its instrumental chamber stylistics. The performance version by Fyodor Druzhynin (viola) and Mikhail Muntyan (piano), who were the first performers of this musical piece, was analyzed. Their interpretation may be considered the golden standard, as precise as possible to the author’s idea. Shostakovich dedicated his opus to F. Druzhinin, who often participated in the premieres of the composer’s works and was familiar with the performing style of his music. The factors that form the musical stage image of Shostakovich’s chamber style include the conceptual intention to demonstrate the conflict, the scale of the concept, and conceptuality in interpreting its components during the implementation of the idea of symphonizing the genre. The importance of the Sonata for Viola in the history of this genre and in the history of 20th-century music can hardly be overestimated. The composer expanded the imagery and emotional sphere of the viola performance and used the sound range of the viola to the extreme: all registers of the instrument were involved. The viola part is rich in original effects: cantilena on flageolets, a large number of double notes, and a complex polyphonic fabric with double counterpoints (especially in the Cadences), it requires considerable effort from the performer. The analyzed performance version of the work is quite complete in terms of the performance of the specified characteristics of the author’sidea. It can be considered a benchmark in instrumental chamber performance of the 20th century.

“Oppressed by Sensual Delight”: On a Lesbian Relationship with Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata

This paper explores Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata (1919) through the experience of a lesbian relationship—a relationship that extends from the Sonata as experienced by a violist and scholar, to Clarke herself as a performer and composer. Inspired by the work of Suzanne Cusick, I examine the musical elements of the Viola Sonata that invite and enable a lesbian relationship in the music. Such elements include existence outside the phallic economy, porous ego boundaries, and a fluid positioning within the power/pleasure/intimacy triad. A central theme of Clarke’s compositional style is embodiment, which furthers the potential for a lesbian experience of the Viola Sonata through “body-aware” and performer-centric techniques. The poetic inscription for the Sonata, lines from Alfred de Musset’s “La nuit de mai,” serves to further construct a musical narrative of embodiment through the relationship of Poet and Muse. Without claiming that Clarke was a lesbian, this paper sheds light on the Viola Sonata by considering the relationships between performer, composer, and listener in a lesbian musical analysis.

ПОЛЯРНОСТЬ СТИЛЕВЫХ ОРИЕНТИРОВ С. СЛОНИМСКОГО В ИНСТРУМЕНТАЛЬНЫХ КОНЦЕРТАХ «ВЕСЕННИЙ» И «ТРАГИКОМЕДИЯ»

This article is devoted to the comparative description of two string concerts by Sergei Mikhailovich Slonimsky (1932–2020): the violin "Concerto Primaverile" (1983), focused on the Romantic style of the XIXth century, and the viola "Tragicomedy" (2005), related to the avant-garde line of the composer's work. Each of the opuses embodies different types of programmaticity: a generalized one in "Concerto Primaverile" for violin and string orchestra, and more concretized one in the concert on "Crime and Punishment" by F. Dostoevsky for viola and chamber orchestra. Thus, Slonimsky also turned to both types of programmaticity in solo compositions for these instruments, for example, figurative specificity becomes the main characteristic in the dramaturgy of the final piece for violin "Legend" (based on the novel by I. Turgenev). On the contrary, the Viola Sonata and Variations for a solo instrument rather address a generalized compositional approach. Comparison of the two concert scores follows the lines of their stylistic difference: programmaticity, specificity of dramaturgy and technical implementation, and in particular problems such as complex melodic figuration, contrapuntal saturation of homophonic monodic texture, the role of micropolyphony, the introduction of third and quarter tones and other non-standard principles of sound production.

An Examination on D. Shostakovich’s Viola Sonata Op.147 from a Technical Perspective

The purpose of this article is to provide a resource to those who wish to gain a deeper understanding on the technical aspects of Shostakovich’s Viola Sonata Op. 147 based on F. Druzhinin’s edited viola part. This study consists of two methods; books are used as research material to provide an overview on composers life and music, extracts from F. Druzhinin’s viola part and recordings are examined to provide technical suggestions to performers. Preparing this article, books and F. Druzhinin’s viola part are obtained from the library of Royal Northern College of Music. For the recording of Fyodor Druzhinin, youtube is used as online resource. The headlines inside the study are as follows; an overview of Shostakovich’s life and viola sonata, other composers and artists that have influenced Shostakovich’s music (Ludwig Van Beethoven and Nicolai Gogol) and performance suggestions given based on F. Druzhinin’s viola part and recording. For the music examples in this article Moscow: Publishers Musika, 1984, Collected Works in forty-two volumes: (Vol.38, viola part edited by F. Druzhinin) is used. 

Музыка Д.Д. Шостаковича как объект герменевтики

The article considers different models of musical hermeneutics; their productivity is assessed with respect to the music of Shostakovich, the very nature of which makes it a favourite object of hermeneutical interpretations. A comparative analysis of various essays in finding out hidden meanings in Shostakovich’s works allows us to draw some conclusions regarding the scholarly and informative value of different approaches to the hermeneutics of Shostakovich’s oeuvre and to the hermeneutics of music in general. A special attention is paid to the decryption of enigmatic associations in two works by Shostakovich, the Tenth Symphony and the Viola Sonata.

György Ligeti: Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds ed. by Louise Duchesneau and Wolfgang Marx, and: Ligeti’s Laments: Nostalgia, Exoticism, and the Absolute by Amy Bauer (review)

Reviewed by: György Ligeti: Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds ed. by Louise Duchesneau and Wolfgang Marx, and: Ligeti’s Laments: Nostalgia, Exoticism, and the Absolute by Amy Bauer Péter Laki György Ligeti: Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds. Edited by Louise Duchesneau and Wolfgang Marx. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2011. [xx, 298 p. ISBN 9781843835509. $80.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Ligeti’s Laments: Nostalgia, Exoticism, and the Absolute. By Amy Bauer. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. [xvii, 234 p. ISBN 9781409400417. $99.95.] Music examples, bibliography, index. The year 2011 saw the publication of these two new books on György Ligeti (1923–2006), one of the most important composers in the second half of the twentieth century. György Ligeti: Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds is an edited volume of essays bringing together an international team of scholars and composers, many of whom had a strong personal connection to the composer either as collaborator or student. One of the editors, Louise Duchesneau, was Ligeti’s personal assistant for many years; the other, Wolfgang Marx, is a German-born musicologist now teaching in Ireland. Both also appear as authors of individual chapters. The volume makes some extremely important source material available to the reader and sheds light on many issues of biography, work analysis, and musical aesthetics that were only imperfectly understood in the past. Starting at the beginning, Friedemann Sallis, an expert on Ligeti’s early works, explores the composer’s complex relationship with his teacher Sándor Veress (1907–92), one of the leading members of [End Page 767] the generation of Hungarian composers after Bartók and Kodály. Veress preceded Ligeti in emigration and settled in Bern, Switzerland, where he had a distinguished career as a composer and teacher. Sallis finds some unexpected musical connections between teacher and student, and documents their estrangement after Ligeti joined the Darmstadt circle of avant-gardists, whose music filled Veress with horror. The hard feelings, however, were all on Veress’s side; in 1993, Ligeti honored his teacher (who had passed away the year before) by dedicating “Facsar,” the third movement of his Sonata for Solo Viola, in Veress’s memory. The Viola Sonata, one of the greatest works from Ligeti’s late period, figures prominently in the second essay, by Irish composer-musicologist Benjamin R. Dwyer, who boldly connects it to the Cello Sonata, written in Hungary some forty years earlier. The two unaccompanied string works are connected by many hidden threads in spite of their obvious stylistic differences. (On p. 25, Dwyer names the popular Hora staccato by Grigoras¸ Dinicu as a precedent for Ligeti’s “Hora lungă”; this is an error, however, since the two “horas” are related only by name.) Tiborc Fazekas and Ildikó Mándi-Fazekas, a husband-and-wife team of Hungarian language specialists, review Ligeti’s connection to the great poet Sándor Weöres (1913–89), whose works, sometimes defying translation, were set to music by numerous Hungarian composers. Ligeti’s Weöres settings span the entire oeuvre, from 1946 to 2001, and the authors set out to show how this poetic inspiration “sustained Ligeti’s artistic development” (p. 62). Let it be noted briefly that the “reed fiddle” in the title of his final Weöres setting, Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedűvel (“With Pipes, Drums, Reed Fiddles”) is not a fiddle at all, but rather, as ethnomusicologist Bálint Sárosi taught us a long time ago, a children’s toy that must be classified among the idiophones. (A more complete survey of Weöres’s influence on Hungarian music, including Ligeti, is available in Péter Laki, “Jenseits des Wortes: Die Sprachmagie von Sándor Weöres in der ungarischen Musik von Zoltán Kodály bis Peter Eötvös,” Kosmoi: Peter Eötvös an der Hochschule für Musik der Musik-Akademie der Stadt Basel—Schriften, Gespräche, Dokumente. [Saarbrücken: Pfau, 2007], 115–46.) Co-editor Wolfgang Marx probes “The Concept of Death in György Ligeti’s Oeuvre” in the Requiem and the opera Le grand macabre ; the most important revelation here comes at the end of the article...

The Viola in America: Two Centuries of Progress

Research on the viola in America has largely been confined to activities in the twentieth century. Recent efforts by the American Viola Society, notably the American Viola Project—which aims to preserve American viola compositions—have focused on the early history of the viola. This article provides a broad overview of the viola from the colonial period through 1920. From the eighteenth century, contributions by members of Moravian settlements are highlighted. A viola concerto by Peter Albrecht von Hagen and solo viola performances by his son, Peter “Albertus” von Hagen, are also detailed. In the nineteenth century, Theodore Thomas served as a great promoter of the viola, both through his programing of music and in his association with the viola soloists George Matzka and Charles Baetens. The viola also benefitted from increased interest by amateurs, composers, and publishers. The most well-known efforts are Charles Martin Loeffler’s chamber works, which have remained a staple of the viola repertoire. A number of prominent viola soloists appeared in the twentieth century including Émile Férir, Louis Svečenski, Louis Bailly, and Rebecca Clarke. 1919 was a turning point for the viola with the Berkshire Festival Competition for Viola and Piano, resulting in a tie between Ernest Bloch’s Suite and Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata.

Ic1/ic5 Interaction in the Music of Shostakovich

ABSTRACTSeveral analysts have observed in Shostakovich's later works a particular focusing of pitch resources – namely, a frequent emphasis on interval classes 1 and 5. In fact, pitch structures highlighting these interval classes occur in music from throughout his career, although no one has considered this phenomenon in depth. The present study does so by exploring the interaction of ic1 and ic5 within the context of Shostakovich's multi‐faceted tonal language, interpreting passages from the Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2, the Viola Sonata, the Symphonies Nos. 14 and 15, the String Quartet No. 12, the ‘Funeral March’ from the Aphorisms and the song ‘Noch'‐Dialog’ (‘Night Dialog’) from the Suite on Verses of Michelangelo. Drawing on the methodology of dual interval space, the article demonstrates that a focus on ic1/ic5 relationships offers a compelling perspective on much of Shostakovich's music, one that engages both local detail and large‐scale organization. Not only can ic1/ic5 interaction shape a piece on its own, but it can also connect to other aspects of design, even to relationships between music and text. Moreover, an ic1/ic5 approach sheds new light on previous Shostakovich analyses, most notably those by Russian theorists on modality in Shostakovich.

Neurological Problems of Famous Musicians: The Classical Genre

Neurological histories of great musicians allow for a unique perspective on music physiology. Bedrich Smetana's autobiographical string quartet ends with the musical equivalent of tinnitus in the fourth movement, rendering the youthful and passionate themes of earlier movements moot as the piece ends depicting his ultimately fatal disease, neurosyphilis. Dmitri Shostakovich survived the censorship of Joseph Stalin's apparatchiks but suffered a prolonged form of paralysis attributable to slowly progressive motor neuron disease, although the viola sonata he wrote on his deathbed has become standard repertoire. Glenn Gould was a hypochondriacal pianist with obsessive-compulsive disorder and suspected Asperger syndrome. Vissarion Shebalin and (Ira) Randall Thompson had strokes followed by aphasia without amusia. Domenico Scarlatti provides an example of how even great composers must alter their technical expectations depending upon the skills and body habitus of their chief patrons. The focal dystonia afflicting Leon Fleisher and Gary Graffman catalyzed the discipline of performing arts medicine.

Ave Maria for Upper Voices (SSA) Unaccompanied, and: Chorus from Shelley's "Hellas" for Five-Part Women's Chorus (SSSAA) Unaccompanied, and: Morpheus for Viola and Piano, and: Prelude, Allegro, and Pastorale for B[flat] Clarinet and Viola, and: Songs with Violin, and: Songs with Piano (review)

In recent years, Rebecca Clarke (1886- 1979), a British-born composer who eventually settled in the United States, has been gaining recognition as a distinctive and significant musical voice of the early twentieth century. She studied composition at the Royal College of Music in London with Charles Villiers Stanford and had a long professional career as a violist. Her first successes in composition were in the United States, and the two works written for competitions sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, the Viola Sonata (1919; pub. 1921) and Piano Trio (1921; pub. 1928), have been central to the growing interest in Clarke's music.

Shostakovich on Screen: Film as Metatext and Myth

he Viola Sonata (Altovaia sonata), a film about Dmitrii Shostakovich, was made in 1980 but immediately prohibited, submerged into social nonexistence. Why did the Soviet regime consider a film with an innocent musical title so dangerous that it kept the film out of the cultural realm for six years, until glasnost and perestroika? To answer this question we must analyze the film from historical, socioanthropological, and narratological perspectives, and also from the perspectives of the semiotics of propaganda and censorship. It is also important to understand the film as a metatext and myth, to determine its place in the semiosphere of Soviet and postSoviet cultures. This article consists of three parts: plot-an introduction to the film's problematic and history from the viewpoint of cultural anthropology (which tends to be very topical approach in the field of film studies as well as the field of Russian studies); climax-a film text analysis from the perspectives of the semiotics of film and of culture; and denouement-an analysis of the film's metatextual and mythological structure, its cultural discourse, and its role in the development of antitotalitarian semantic counterstrategies. The Viola Sonata is a film experiment; an optative-a modeling artistic structure, the major idea of which is, by showing the inward world of the great composer, to reproduce his imagined dialogue with history.

Viola Sonata for Viola and Piano (1989)

Viola Sonata for Viola and Piano (1989)

Rebecca Clarke's Chamber Music (I)

Thus Hugh Wood in this magazine, nearly a decade ago. At the time he was writing, one name whose re-emergence hadn't even been guessed at was that of Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979), who'd been living in New York for close on 40 years. The New Grove was about to reduce the scant paragraph she'd received in Grove 5 to a single sentence, barely mentioning that she wrote any music at all. Yet since some American broadcasts to mark her 90th birthday, the revival of interest in her works has been swift and strong. Several of them have been committed to record—the Viola Sonata and Piano Trio three times each!—and commentators have recognized, with unusual alacrity, another significant British figure from the inter-war years who wrote with impressive technical command, individual expression, and a refreshingly international outlook.

"Too Much of Albion"? Mrs. Coolidge and Her British Connections

When, in the space of little more than a year in 1915 and 1916, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge' found herself bereft of her husband and both her parents but in possession of a fairly large fortune, the manner in which she would thenceforth indulge herself, as she later put it,2 in her passion for chamber music only gradually began to take shape. First, the Berkshire Quartet was established under her patronage; and two years later, in 1918, it formed the backbone of a Berkshire Festival of Chamber Music at her summer estate on South Mountain near Pittsfield, Massachusetts. No British musicians were involved as composers or performers in this first September festival, but at least one, the cellist May Mukle (1880-1963), was present as a guest, the third category of importance to Mrs. Coolidge. Mukl' had been on tour with Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979), an English viola player and aspiring composer, and it seems that it was in New York in 1917 that they first made contact with Mrs. Coolidge. Clarke, who had established herself in the United States in 1916,3 was probably at the 1918 festival, too; she was certainly at the second one in 1919, for that year her Viola Sonata won second prize in Mrs. Coolidge's competition. (In fact, it had tied in a dead heat with Bloch's Suite for Viola and Piano; Mrs. Coolidge had to give the casting vote.4 You should have seen the faces of the jury when it was revealed the composer was a woman! Mrs. Coolidge wrote to Clarke.)5 The sonata was performed by Louis Bailly and Harold Bauer on September 25 in a program that included the first American performance of Elgar's String Quartet. Two days later a concert of vocal chamber music included a Purcell aria and Vaughan Williams's On

Classicism and Arthur Bliss: His New Viola Sonata

Classicism and Arthur Bliss: His New Viola Sonata