JAVS Fall 1996

16

Review the piece carefully without your viola in hand. Most newer works will have a key or guide to the symbols used throughout. If performance instructions appear in a lan guage you do not know, be certain to have them translated. These can be quite lengthy and detailed, perhaps because today's com posers, unlike those of preceding generations, cannot be assured that future performers of a given work will have a common understand ing of performance practice: many works will be disseminated not only in one country but throughout the entire world. (The further a composer expects his or her piece to go, whether geographically or temporally, the more detailed instructions seem to become!) A careful reading of the instructions can save countless hours of frustrated practice, and you will be all the more secure that you are proceeding according to the composer's wishes. If you are unfamiliar with some sym bols, several excellent resources, including Eckart Schloifer's Pro Musica Nova, contain clear explanations in both English and German of many notational symbols used by a broad spectrum of contemporary com posers. Only when you are satisfied that you understand the notation should you begin to play through the piece. The first play-through of a work new to you is critically important. It must be slow and careful. Imagine that your ears and eyes are connected to a video recorder in your brain, and that your first read-through creates a template against which all other subsequent performances are judged and corrected. The original template must be correct. Playing through the piece against a very slow metro nome setting will help you achieve an accu rate first reading. During this initial play-through, make mental notes of the difficult passages; once you have finished playing, go back and mark them. Then, as you practice, work on these difficult passages first. Resolve to solve one problem passage during each practice session. When you have learned the problem spots, go back and put the piece together. It is no

not as a series of positions and keys but rather as an unending flow of pitches. Another alter native would be to create etudes out of an existing contemporary piece. For example, Penderecki's Cadenza for Solo Viola can be divided into four reasonable, page-length etudes. Your next step should be to locate a good music library or sheet-music store and spend some time perusing the stacks of viola litera ture. If a good library is inaccessible to you, obtain a copy of the Shar catalog or other commercial source and browse the listings. Write to the Primrose International Viola Archive for a list of their holdings (or consult "New Acquisitions in PIVA" in each ]AVS), or use Zeyringer's Literatur for Viola. Go to con certs of contemporary music and listen. Let your colleagues know you are looking for an interesting new piece. Talk to the composers you know and inquire if they have anything for the viola in their a:uvre. Eventually, you will narrow your focus to one composer and one piece. (If you have trouble finding a score locally, see the list titled "New Music Re sources" accompanying this article.) When interpreting contemporary music, bear in mind that the performer should, first and foremost, serve the vision of the com poser. One of the great pleasures of playing new music is the wealth of available informa tion about contemporary composers and their music. Take time to do basic research about your composer and the work you are tackling. Buy or borrow scores and recordings of other pieces by the same composer. Learn what you can about the composer's style and aesthetic. It is a rare twentieth-century composer who has escaped writing about his or her art! If your composer is still among the living, you may wish to contact him or her directly with questions specific to the piece you are working on. (I have never met a composer who declined talking to a performer interested in his or her work.) Lack of research can result in performances that, while aurally pleasing and technically proficient, may be considered aesthetically or stylistically "wrong."