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Program Notes
for violin and piano is a technically demanding composition written specifically for and dedicated to Wolfgang David and David Gompper. This carefully crafted work unfolds in a loose five-part structure that emulates an A B A B A design. In terms of pacing, the B sections are both slower moving and “choppier” than the A sections; an expansive bridge passage—combining characteristics of each of the principal sections—serves as violin cadenza, and links the final B and A.
Various melodic and rhythmic patterns are audible in for violin and piano and stand as generative forces throughout the composition. As a case in point, consider the opening nine measures of the piece (see Example below):
Example: Noel Zahler, for violin and piano mm. 1 – 9
The initial violin gesture presents a string of tritones (intervals that bisect an octave into equal parts), each separated by a minor second and alternating in direction from the one to the next (the first ascends, the second descends (etc)). But a consequential outgrowth of the pattern is the conjoining of two semitonal ascents defined along registral grounds: C# – D – Eb – E – F – F#; and G – Ab – A – Bb – B – C. Even here, however, we recognize an organizational pattern that exists on yet another compositional level, for the combination of the two six-note strings comprises every pitch of the chromatic scale. As for the piano, at the opening of the piece its pitch and rhythmic components are treated with like precision. In terms of pitch, three-note collections of a particular sort saturate the passage, each comprising a semitone and a third—invoking set-class terminology the collections are singly identified as [0, 1, 4]. Rhythmically, the consistent sixteenth-note motion in the piano is presented in groupings of two, three, and four pitches, separated by sixteenth-rests. The groupings are further marked off by changes in register and direction of the line.
Procedures introduced at the head of for violin and piano obtain throughout the work, though often in varied form. In fact Zahler’s consistent manipulation of tritones and short rhythmic cells is particularly compelling. In the case of the former, sounds that are commonplace in tonal compositions occur at prominent points of arrival: these sounds include French augmented sixth chords and fully diminished seventh sonorities. But the events do not carry harmonic implications in for violin and piano; instead, each results from the combination of two tritones separated from one another by distinct intervallic distances: with the augmented sixth chords the tritones are separated by a whole step; and with the fully diminished seventh chords the interval of separation is one semitone larger than a whole step (namely, a minor third).
The interplay of the violin and piano renders a pointillistic style of exchange not uncommon in works by Webern. Furthermore, points of punctuation tend to be articulated by the shift from a contrapuntal to a homophonic style—brief though the shift might be (a similar procedure marks the move from one section to the next). The constant “stop and go” characteristic of the piece is intensified by the flaring to registral extremes, and a particularly striking moment occurs when a very loud, fast and dramatic passage that concludes with the piano at or near its lowest octave is spelled off by the subsequent entry of the violin via a quiet and sustained string harmonic in its uppermost register.
Program Notes by Gregory Marion
Assistant Professor of Music Theory
The University of Saskatchewan
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Noel Zahler
