Year composed: 2008
Duration: 12′
Instrumentation: viola and piano
Movements:
I. Light and Colour
II. Shade and Darkness
Premiered by Ellen Ruth Rose and Cindy Cox, Green Room, War Memorial Building, San Francisco, 2008
Notes:
When I began this piece I had just returned from London and visits to the National Gallery and Tate museums, where I went to look at paintings by English landscape artist J.M.W. Turner. I felt very moved by his depictions of nature–sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. In the Tate there is a room of late paintings; although finished in the early nineteenth century, the material appears almost completely abstracted, with no recognizable forms and amazing gradations of swirling colors. In his catalog, there is a pair of works on the theme of the biblical flood—a sort of before and after duo, titled “shade and darkness” and “light and colour.” I loved the elemental character of these paintings and titles, and decided to use them (although reversed, with “light and colour” first) in my new composition for viola and piano. I also liked the dual meaning of the word “Turner,” as applied not only to the artist, but also as a process of cycling, revolving, turning throughout the music.
The harmonic world is the piece is unusual, and a bit of an experiment for me. The first movement alternates between open strings of the viola and natural harmonics, in a slow unfolding series climbing by thirds and fifths. Given the acoustics of the harmonics, there is a gentle clash between the Just intonation of the viola and the tempered world of the piano. This harmonic difference is taken to extremes in the following movement, with out-of-tune upper partials, “blue” notes, transposed down into the lowest register of the viola, causing a direct clash with the triadic harmonies in the piano.
Turner was commissioned by Composers’ Inc. for their twenty-fifth anniversary season. It was written for violist Ellen Ruth Rose, and the first movement is dedicated to the memory of my late colleague, composer Jorge Liderman.