JAVS Fall 1996

23

THE WIDENING GAP BETWEEN VIOLIST AND COMPOSER

by Pamela Goldsmith

I n the course of my thirty-three years as a professional violist, I have performed many new works in the contemporary music genre, often under unusual circumstances. I have something of a reputation as a champion of new music and one who likes the challenge of difficult repertoire. Some musicians would rather not spend time learning music that is possibly ugly (an aesthetic judgment), enormously time consuming, or extremely awkward on the instrument (sometimes even impossible). Most often, new music is a first performance, a premiere, with all of the bugs desperately needing to be worked out. As the founding violist of the Group for Contemporary Music at Columbia University in 1962, I performed the first compositions to combine live (now called "acoustic") instruments and tapes, electronically syn thesized material, and other cutting-edge technologies. Over the years, I have partici pated in various compositions that call upon the performer to sing, speak, play percussion instruments, run through the audience, simultaneously whistle, rub a foot on the floor, and play the viola, and so forth. I have been instructed by composers on such things as what to wear for a performance or how to look longingly at another musician while playing. In 1975, I played electric viola for Frank Zappa in a memorable set of concerts in which he asked me to use the wah-wah pedal (familiar to guitarists), play grotesquely, and appear on the stage in formal black orchestral attire-barefoot. In the spring of 1994, I was contacted by a composer who informed me he was writing a new composition for viola, shakuhachi and sho. Would I be interested in premiering the work? I was unacquainted with this com poser. He explained that he had a doctorate in ethnomusicology and had long wanted

to write a composition using traditional Japanese instruments together with a Western instrument. Intrigued by the combination and the chance to do something different yet again, I agreed to participate. I have long maintained that it is the duty of performing musicians to lend their efforts to new music and give composers the best possible oppor tunity to be heard; but after my experience with this composition, I am rethinking my attitudes. The following is my amazing but true story ofwhat happened. Week by week, as the the performance date approached, I became increasingly uneasy because I had not heard from him or seen the music, and so I called him. "Oh, yes, I'm beginning to get a feeling for what I'm going to do," he said. That made me even more uneasy, because, in the years I have been performing new works, I have encountered all sorts of difficulties, including notes written out of the viola's range, tempos too fast to generate the notes written, ex panded techniques, and so forth. I have also performed new music that was simply excru ciatingly difficult, requiring hours of practice. (New music is never a terribly well-paying occupation, and in this case I understood it to be non-paying.) A few weeks later I received a call: "We cannot rehearse until the week of the perfor mance, because the shakuhachi player will be in Japan." "I need to see the music anyway," I replied. Two weeks before the performance, I ar ranged for one of my viola students to pick up the music and bring it to me at his lesson. The student informed me the composer was nowhere to be found. I called again. "Oh yes, I haven't written anything down yet, but it's beginning to take shape in my mind. I will bring over the music as soon as it's ready."