Pistis Sophia for solo voice (1970)
Three Pieces for piano (1970)
Fugamericana for piano (1970)
Fantasy for piano (1970)
Little Lullaby for guitar (1970)
Piano Piece 1 (1972)
Piano Piece 2 (1974)
Sonatina for harp and piano (1973-4)
In Memoriam for 2 trumpets, 2 horns, marimba (1974)
Black Tea for soprano, contrabass, harp and percussion (1976)
Amor Dammi Quel Fazzolettino for piano-4 hands (1976)
Fast/Short for two keyboards (1977)
Intermezzo for piano (1977)
Three Pieces in F for piano (1978)
*Piano Sonata 1 (1978)
*Piano Sonata 2 (1979)
*Piano Sonata 3 (1979)
Last Dance for 2 pianos and percussion (1979)
Dance for organ (1981)
Organbook (1981)
Worldes Blis for 3 trumpets, 2 horns, 2 trombones, 4 timpani (1982)
A Margarita Debayle for soprano and piano (1982)
*Piano Sonata 4 (1982)
Black Tea for harp, soprano, double bass and percussion (1982)
Quintet for flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano (1983)
Pastorale for bass trombone and organ (1983)
Harmonizations (1983)
Three Choral Preludes for organ (1983)
American Songs for oboe, clarinet, bassoon (1984)
Chaconne for violin, marimba and tubular bells (1984)
Trio for horn, bass trombone and piano (1984)
*Piano Sonata 5 (1985)
String Quartet 1 (1985)
String Quartet 2 (1986)
String Quartet 3 (1986)
*Piano Sonata 6 (1986)
Little Boy Blue/Danny Boy for tenor and piano (1986)
Borges Songs for baritone and piano (1986)
Libera Me for organ (1986)
La Mejor Tinta for baritone and piano (1987)
Three Madrigals for SATB, violoncello and piano (1983-1987)
String Quartet 4 (1987)
String Quartet 5 (1988)
Sonata #1 for Two Pianos (1976, rev 1989)
String Quartet 6 (1989)
Five Sonatinas for piano (1994-5)
Song Set for soprano/tenor and piano (1993-97)
*Death of the Hired Hand for soprano and piano (1996)
*The Love Duet for soprano, tenor and piano (1996)
Neruda Songs for tenor and piano (1997)
The Adulterous Woman voice, piano (1997)
Whitman for sop, mezzo-sop, baritone, two pianos and percussion (2000)
Symphony in Six Parts for large orchestra (2000)
*Piano Sonata 7 (2001)
6 Performances for violin, violoncello, synthesizer, piano, horn, clarinet, flute (2001)
A Very Valentine soprano, piano (2002)
*Rave for 2 pianos, 2 synthesizers, electric violin and violin (2001-3)
Love Alone for voice, piano (2003)
Paradise Lost Part One: The Voices of God
The four voices (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone),
4 synthesizers, electric String Quartet, percussion (2004)
Paradise Lost Part Two: Adam and Eve in Heaven
The four voices (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone),
Adam (tenor), Eve (soprano), God in the Garden (boy soprano),
flute, oboe, 3 synthesizers, violin, violoncello, percussion (2005)
Two Sax Sextets (2006)
Jazz for synthesizer (2006)
Songs and Dances for solo cello (2006)
*Sonata for unaccompanied violin (2006)
Sonata for guitar (2007)
*Available on innova
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Catalog of Works
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After many years' hiatus, I received a phone call from Andrew. He said he would send me some of his CD's. So it was, that upon returning home from a week out of town, I found that his CD's had arrived. I felt a surge of anticipation akin to how I would feel on contemplating the sampling of a box of the finest French chocolates or perhaps an order of several select and distinctive Estate teas, in their air-tight pouches; both familiar territories for me, each requiring a level of personal engagement involving the senses to the edge of the ineffable. Vividly recalling my reactions to Andrew's piano recital in Carnegie Recital Hall, so many years ago that it seems almost like another lifetime away, I knew that with these CD's, I was going to be embarking on a musical journey that would acquaint my senses with vast and exotic regions that, to be fully appreciated, would require considerable deliberate attention.
My plan was simple; there were SEVEN piano sonatas, the last being among the longest I know of (and to date I have only managed THREE of my own and by comparison, their musical landscape is about as commonplace as a walk through suburbia, and compared with Andrew's, none of them lasts more than twenty minutes); in order to fully appreciate them, I would have to experience them one at a time; I would begin with Sonata 1.
The acquaintance process would involve listening to this piece many many times. Each time I was going to determine how long it would take for me to recognize a phrase, a passage, anticipate the music as well as register my particular reactions to it.
The immediate impression was not unfamiliar; Andrew was serious, not just about composition, but about pianism; he was playing his own music as if it were by someone else, with a combination of precision and passion in every phrase, practically every note. I had no doubt that this "playing with authority" whether one plays soft or loud, sharp or smooth, or on any number of pianistic continuums, was surely going to be a hallmark of everything I would be hearing from Andrew.
After listening to this piece many times, I read the liner notes by Bruce Posner. The usual information one gets was there; how the piece was constructed, etc. But what was this music about, what was it saying, and what was it saying to me as I was listening to it?
It is commonplace when describing music to say things such as that certain phrases remind one of someone else's style, and these sort of leapt out at me through the piece; Bussoni, Messiaen, Subotnick, any number of other composers that used Serialism. But I have come to believe that these are merely the inevitable result of there being "nothing new under the sun" and that unless my senses were growing tired, jaded, far too used to the dulling down process, which includes intellectualizing everything in life to the point that nothing ever becomes too emotionally disturbing, that I was going to need to reach farther, behind what seemed the merely obvious. For after all, for whatever it's worth, whether a composer chooses to use Serialism or something else, the choice has been made; "I have selected this and will write it down" and in the process create a sound painting that can be reproduced to project a select set of sounds over a projected interval of time. I would be trying out this sonata against my work, my daily routine, my idleness; my being at home and hearing it play as an accompaniment to my life.
It was not the case that this Sonata 1 sounded like everything else that fits a sort of jargonized, commonplace rejoinder to much serious 20th Century music; atonal, Serialist, etc. The piece was far too distinct in so many ways for that. It did not just sound like everything else.
"Andrew Violette, a composer and pianist, has assembled a large portfolio of works since the early 1970's, when he was a student of Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions at the Juilliard School," said the New York Times.
Elliott Carter: Another vivid recollection from the past was a concert at Merkin Hall of 20th Century music featuring some works of Elliott Carter. The musicians played the music with "authority"; they meant it, every note and moreover, every phrase could just as well have been by a "romantic" or "classical" composer; the intension was just as real, just as certain, which is what made the recital so astounding. The result was incredible profundity. One might attach whatever one liked of the modern experience in its many different textures involving our relationships with nature, the weather, various technologies, historical events, each other as people, ourselves with ourselves.
And yes, this Sonata 1 had similar associations for me, especially with weather. For instance, the opening theme could be likened to being out in a snowstorm, or is it out in a parade with confetti falling all around? No, for me it is wintry, but not in a negative sense, as some of us -me included- actually welcome the cold when it comes, as we find it invigorating on another level than sunshine and heat. There are all the flecks of snow, raindrops, rivulets of water and little eddies of wind scattering things about, stomping the snow off your boots, slipping, and then in the last movement something like the arrival of Spring, the appearance again of woodpeckers, then near the end, the little phrase that's sort of a flash of Scott Joplin, to me a summer composer, repeated twice, them the perfect ending on a complete tonal consonance.
Oh, come on. This is becoming as hackneyed as liner notes to a romantic composition! There are places in this sonata that could easily be said to convey emotions too, such as annoyance, pain (a phrase in the third movement), surprise, shock, stealth, deliberation, loneliness, morbidity (oh yes, especially the Bussoni-like passage in the second movement).
Or, one step beyond this would be to adopt Igor Stravinsky's view -which I believe he held insincerely- that "music can only express music," in which case Bruce Posner's liner notes seem the best conceivable way to describe the action in this piece. However, I am unwilling to go there completely as I cannot help but connect whatever music I hear to something else that I am inside; even those collections of experience that over time have developed the entity I call myself.
I shall shortly venture forth into Sonata 2, then Sonata 3 and so on. There will come a time when each will form its distinct impression on me, as indeed the various sonatas of Alexander Scriabin did several years back, and I will relegate each to a place where inevitably I shall have occasion to remark to myself or to my friends, "I must hear Violette's First piano sonata, nothing else will do," as the mood will simply stand for nothing else.
Incidentally, I am quite content to suggest that this first piano sonata of Andrew Violette's is in my experience about the most ambitiously intended first attempt of its kind. I thought of Beethoven's first, Chopin's first, Brahms' first, Scriabin's first, Ives' first, etc. I'd certainly put this one up there, for seriously accomplished pianists only, as it is obviously quite difficult and quite frankly there is almost nothing so unnerving or infuriating as hearing a piece played without proper attention or intention especially when the composition is not well known. Here, Andrew has demonstrated how this piece is to be played. I have absolutely no doubt that an aspiring pianist of accomplished technique might very well interpret this piece differently, but they most certainly must begin with the performance standard set here by the composer / pianist himself.
Can I say, Bravo?
Sonata 2 for Piano:
"Dad! How can you stand listening to that stuff? It sounds crazy. It's driving ME crazy. Please turn it off. And you complain about MY music!"
It was my twenty year old daughter who'd come down into the basement where my office is, where I listen to music, and where the laundry facilities are also located. She was doing her laundry. We were in the home stretch, the third movement of Andrew Violette's Sonata 2, the composition for piano -and pianist- demonstrating simply by having two tracks widely separated and each playing within a limited range, that the momentary illusion of two separate instruments could be demonstrated.
The second piano sonata, easily as distinctive as Andrew's first, presents another side of the composer's possibilities; the ability to mimic, lampoon or otherwise deride some other kinds of music, or even other sources of sound, as for instance Gershwin lampooned taxi cab horns in American in Paris. Well why not? Humor -and opportunities for it- to make us laugh and smile once in a while, is certainly one of music's uses.
This work is in three movements, the first sonata was in four. The first movement all by itself seems articulated into several smaller sections:
1. The opening slow almost dirge-like passage up through a crescendo of trills to a bunch of answering chords; "Yes?" "No!" followed by
2. The trilled passage where if anything is suggested it's something faintly creepy, like Frankenstein walking at night through a foggy forest, leading to more Messiaen-like chords -thoughtful and challenging by turns- then
3. The quite Messiaen-like passage introducing the simple broken triad placed incongruously amid the rest of the jumble as if to say in that innocent tone of voice, "Pay attention and be normal now" that also includes hints of the prior passage that sort of fades up and away -silence-
4. Another confrontation between the broken triad in another position and other disturbing elements including a Beethoven fate quote.
5. A descending then ascending arpeggio.
I found the whole thing quite funny. The sort of lurching stalking theme in the bass parts under the trills also reminded me of one of Vladimir Ussachevsky's electronic or tape music pieces from the 1960's. I loved it for any possible associations I could come up with, and of course it was all wonderfully played and you can bet that everything was intended exactly as played too; no one better try taking this piece on unless they think they could better the interpretation and they'd really have to have the technique too, as for instance the difference between playing the trills right (with precisions, delicacy as well as intension) and playing them wrong (inattentively and sloppily) would really matter.
The second movement, only by a hair, is my favorite part of this work. There's a really interesting recurring syncopated motif in it.
Indeed, the better than usual uses of syncopation throughout this composition should be noted. In the first movement the opening rhythms suggest something like the arhythmic tolling of a bell. In the liner notes, Andrew mentions various ways he has played this part. If I have anything to recommend I would hear it almost as slow and ponderous and heavy as possible to accentuate the grueling aspect to the sonorities coupled with that tolling quality of the rhythms against each other.
In a further entry, I might expand on the notion that one really needs to have heard a LOT of music to be able to get the most from an Andrew Violette composition.
Sonata 3
"Hey man! I'm dazed and confused!" he remarked as he got up to leave and go upstairs. We were in the eleventh track. It was even beginning to sound hopeful in places. Earlier he'd asked, "How many times have you played this?"
"Six or seven times I think," I replied.
"You were listening to it last night?"
"Yes," I said.
Just as he left we got to the twelfth track, where there is indeed quite a lot of "something" to listen to.
Sonata 3 lasts nearly an hour and sixteen minutes. Sonata 2 took 12 minutes 40 seconds. Sonata 1 takes just under 15 minutes. Did it take me at least these many hearings of this one piece to prove that through most of it it's not that you're listening in particular to any "something", but instead that much of the drama in this piece is built into the reverberations; the sustains following punctuations of sound, which must rely on the characteristics of the physical and mechanical capabilities of the particular instrument, which in this case is a Hamburg Steinway CD147 (a Steinway D by any other name; an instrument certainly capable of terrific sustain).
It would be all too easy, as would the ear unused to atonality, to merely pass off Andrew's entire stunt here with responses like, "Is he really serious?" "You can't expect me to believe this is even music can you?" or "You mean there are people out there who do that for a living?" Take your pick. This stuff isn't even intelligible to most people as anything other than noise.
But my ears ARE accustomed to atonality. So I can't help it; anything they perceive as might be seriously intended, is going to get through to that level of attention. It's no presumption to consider the situation as just as similar to where there are mathematicians out there, not content with the expressive limitations of standard algebra, who have developed abstract algebras, there are likewise composers who even given the confines of a limited tonal pallet; the twelve tones, have managed to figure out other ways of fooling the mind into believing that a certain sonic certainty, an "ok, that sounds right" response, might be triggered any number of non-standard ways. There's plenty of this kind of thing going on in this piece, if one prepares oneself to hear it.
First track - You just know you're off to a stressed down when you hear the first aching chord. The next few chords remind me of a kind of ultra-modern Passacaglia. Then the chords and sustains begin. There will be many of these passages in this piece. Are these conversations between people Andrew knows? Maybe. They sound like lampoons of various things, people, ideas, references made in the banalities of sound used to paint light images probably in the dead of night. There's something spectral going on in this piece too. You are either at times between dimensions or between galaxies. Interspersed with these are more humdrum references. I still think this stuff would make perfect background for some peculiarly voluptuous murder mystery. There's something almost Scriabin's Sixth and Seventh about some of this stuff including the huge bass pals and rattling trills. A spirit of unknowable intent might be lurking, a forlorn being bearing a hopeless message from a bygone era; the tragedy upon a tragedy; the original creation of a past life, snuffed out too soon, itself parodied into oblivion and become unrecognizable, or at least something entirely different.
Second track - Hearing this, after just having heard the first track, you actually think this part sounds "normal." It doesn't last long.
Third track - Four notes.
Fourth track - You're back in the sulk; depressed, maybe frightened. It's still night and things are going bump and maybe there's even occasional wind, thunder and lightening. Then the sustains after clusters begins and this is where the whole tableau of sound is smeared and the catching of it involves paying as much attention (more attention) to the reverberating sustains after the initial impact of each cluster. There's even a few phrases that sound "star struck" then the commonplace purple of the disembodied romantic theme attempts to inhabit the same space with the iron and steel sheen and density of some of the points of sound, most after repeated hearings fall into a predictable alternative harmony which the mind accepts as perfectly normal. Some of this sounds like "scenes from a relationship" too. Might be. It's highly dramatic.
Fifth track - Tone clusters and their reverberating sonorities. Your best bets are deep space or deep meditation. You can imagine a trip at mega-warp speeds past a string of variously colored and shaped galaxies as you encounter larger and larger voids on your trip out to the Great Wall of galaxies. Or you are on a voyage deep inside yourself, to the ultimate place inside of contemplation. Allow yourself to feel the ripples in the reflections of sound from each tone cluster in turn, knowing that eventually you will come out on the other side; transformed by the endurance of the vivrations; trying each on with one's own emotional settings; resetting oneself where one encounters enlightenment. This is really the heart and soul of this work; a meditation. Pieces like it have no doubt been done by other composers. But if not, then it's fitting for Andrew to have shown the rest of us what we are not used to hearing; the spaces between notes or chords / clusters. Finally the pace begins to pick up, the chords come more quickly, but every one has the interval of a second in it which makes the sound blurry and its reflection foggy. Finally you reach a hopeful sounding chord and then the agonized pace begins to grow ever so slightly faster. Another hopeful sounding chord, then, more agonizingly slow chords. You have the sensation that you are getting somewhere though it may take quite a while to get there. The effort, like slogging through something thick and sticky and mind-numbing, repeats a three to five note phrase blocked by clusters blurred by major and minor seconds. There is something relentless, terrible and fatiguing about the ordeal. This has already gone on for nearly twenty minutes -.
Sixth track - When it resolves into some more hopeful and uplifting chords as if the struggle were largely over.
Seventh track - But it's not. The same struggling theme tries to reassert itself and is in the process of being partially smothered by tone clusters.
Eighth track - Slow and quiet octaves. Feel the power of the reflections of their reverberations. More careful chords, leading to -
Ninth track - Something to listen to, but it's a surrealistic glyph on themes by Chopin and maybe Liszt. The romantic pose is translucent before the background of interspersed discordant passages. The climaxes are impotent and lead nowhere in particular but back into the gauzy spectral landscape of the original lyric work by the original tragic romantic pianist / composer. What does he get?
Tenth track - Just some more black anonymous disinterested tone clusters separated by space enough to hear their reverberations fade away. At one point you imagine that the piece has ended, but no, he's caught you and until you hear the sliding fifths and the repeating note against them is there the possibility of something different.
Eleventh track - More glistening chords attempt to get something more than the usual conversations among disinterested parts going. There are occasional repeating strophes punctuated by more hulking lines of tone clusters. Some repeating phrases cadence in a hopeful major chord.
Twefth track - A recognizable dance at last, except that it's also surreal. It could be out of your worst nightmare, a dance of the teeth you've lost in your lifetime or of your bones after all flesh is gone, alight in the moonlight, complete with quotes from Chopin that impart an equestrian dash over it all.
Thirteenth track - Repeated chords, slightly rising, under more sustained chords; off tempo, regular, but not quite. It reminds me of work, followed by
Fourteenth track - A gray dirge like little chorale, "Is this all we can expect?" It could have been a blurry version of something by someone like Bartok or Hindemith maybe. It tries a few cramped cadences, all to some extent aching with pain of some sort or another, then it gets into a lopsided stride, side to side and blurry like a slightly drunk person waddling along home.
The harmonic aspect continues the walking pace -it could have been even a hair slower- almost Soviet-like in its coldness, a great triumphant anti-triumph leading to a tone cluster under which something like a fractured romanticism attempts to get going. This is the coda, the tail, the apotheosis, a way to say good-bye as well as returning the audience to where they entered the piece. Another climax is intended. The piano waves so long from its treble reaches. One perhaps catches a glimpse of something more innocent when everything was unknown and everyone was much younger. There are some transfigured moments in three quarter turns, a ghostly dance remembered from some happier past, revolving, whirling, faster and faster. Another attempt at a climax, leads to a bunch of chords, then more running passages, etc. Frenetic mixed tonality figurations laced with clusters of atonal sound create a bright but parched tonality, the crinkling phrases and big chords could suggest something spectral. It's sort of stomped out, whatever it is. The end is lavish with these brilliant flashy but cold passages.
Sonata 4
First track - More tone clusters and their reflected sustains, as in the middle of the previous sonata. Sonata 2 opened with a consonant; this one opens with a cluster.
Second track - An elegiac dance / dream section which forms itself into its own harmonic space, possibly relying on some irregular mode with corresponding counterpoint. Associations I have with it are of ancient or classical theatrical or dance performances. Then it begins to unwind or fall apart into something else, heavier drama is suggested in this otherwise Kabuki-like atmosphere.
Third track - Another version of the same dance? Seems more "Russian" somehow. Some really intense and frankly scary passages appear. You might as well be near the portals of some very dark sinister and evil precinct. But then, wait, the faintly hopeful set of chords might lead out of this.
Fourth track - Oh no, it was a trap and now the demons have their victim and it's like any other previous drama celebrating someone being taken somewhere against their will, someplace like New York City perhaps? It keeps reminding me of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Ebony Concerto in places. There is enough here to make this single movement enough of a concert piece all by itself.
Fifth track - As if to indicate what's left after the foregoing, we might as well end with a care-warn, tired, reflective remorseful, fatigued and fatiguing chorale; a hymn of slim hope and great supplication, burdened as it is with the knowledge of the sordid life lived in this sordid world. The supplicant is answered, almost like a strong tap on the shoulder as kneeling in the pew praying, by variations on this hymn theme, as if to suggest that there are elsewhere even bigger crosses which people are willing to bear, people putting up with even more unintelligible worries, being ground down by the inhuman rush to modernize, facing huge and faceless technical monoliths. These are really a superb set of variations! They reach into dazzling arrays of pianistic virtuosity, yet all outlining the same essential strained nature of the harmony in which the chorale theme has been framed. There comes a variation or two in big tone clusters, first with sustain, then more jagged, punctuated and intense. Andrew is in this work nothing, if not intense. Best get used to it. The variations continue through repeated chords and trills, which make a kind of Spanish / Stravinsky-like texture, then huge Liszt-like chords, brutally pounding their way relentlessly into your mind. The supplicant is answered by being treated as if to a meat tenderizer. There is silence and then it starts again, more silence, then once more, silence. There. Someone has finally shut off the infernal machine.
The supplicant awakes from his dream / nightmare, still kneeling in the pew, still the same person in the same predicament. The same hymn is playing somewhere, but light is steaming through the windows into the practically empty church. It is pleasantly surreal but bearable. There will continue to be pain, but there will be enough balm for it. The Amen then, is on a minor key. The last chord is a plea unanswered. This piece lasts around half an hour.
I read Andrew's liner notes after writing the foregoing and was not too surprised to read similar expressions from the composer himself. Apparently some shades of his message are getting through.
This piece grows on you. I've now heard it now about six times.
Sonata 6
Proceeding here instead of through Sonata 5 -bypassing that immense work for the time being- we have at a mere 11 minutes 55 seconds, Andrew Violette's shortest piano sonata to date.
A similar harmonic atmosphere (tri-tonic), envelopes the elegiac dance / dream section, near the beginning of Sonata 4, that Kabuki-like music. But this piece contains more conventional pianism applied in new and unusual ways to cover the textures implied by this tri-tonic harmony. It's sometimes sparkling and sometimes dry and arid, fluid as if by water or by sand and dust.
Then I read Andrew's liner notes. Dead pianists? Ah yes. Their ghosts do swirl about. And etudes? That was my first impression too; this sounds like an etude. More than mere etudes though.
Here is a new radical classicism incorporating romanticism's elements and anything that was technically accomplished by prior generations of pianists, is fair game, including things that sound like chordal passages right out of the Rite of Spring, though it's probably closer to trace their antecedents to the works of Rachmaninoff and Scriabin. It's just that Andrew makes such a different use of them, as if in one place for a soundtrack to a boxing match. There are a number of passages using the same tri-tonic harmonies, as if to demonstrate the range of expressions possible. Some of them are heroic, some of them dance, swirl, swim, run, burn and burn furiously, simmer, bubble, sparkle. This is a "for real" display of some incredible pianistic "chops" to play this at all without any mistakes. I love how it ends too, almost suggesting a "for show" finish.
There will be sophisticates out there who can and probably would make a game out of guessing where Andrew got this or that particular pianistic cliché to put to use in this or that phrase of which etude, etc. But I'd admonish them to listen to this piece repeatedly about six or seven times and after that time ask themselves whether in fact the clichés haven't taken on a whole new set of associations. It remains after all for the composer to choose, out of his arsenal of resources, what will be used and how and to what effects known or unknown, and then for some aspiring pianists to dare to play what for most of them would be considered staggeringly difficult and add their interpretations onto their performances. It may just turn out that when considering their options, an aspiring pianist would scan Andrew's available offerings and determine that this Sonata 6 was their most likely accessible work, as to borrow an apt analogy, just how few mountaineers can ever hope to scale Everest?
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