JAVS Fall 1996

25

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ScHOOL oF Music

VIOLA STUDY

I

DONALD MciNNES MILTON THOMAS PAMELA GOLDSMITH

For further information, please write or call School of Music University of Southern California Los Angeles, California 90089-0851 Outside California: (800) 872-2213 Inside California: (21 3) 740-8986

After three hours of struggling with this ten-minute composition, we quit. The shaku hachi player informed us that the only other scheduled rehearsal was impossible, because he had a paying job. We agreed to meet at six o'clock the evening of the performance. This concert was a function of one of the universities at which I teach. Since the cam pus had been heavily damaged in the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, our performance had been moved to the local two-year college, which for many years was the agricultural school for the L.A. area. The day of the con cert coincided with a rodeo; when I arrived at the music building, an amplified country western band was playing at deafening levels for the barbecue immediately outside the room we had reserved for our dress rehearsal. The shakuhachi and the sho are both gen erally quiet instruments, so in the course of our rehearsal I never heard them at all. I was, however, preoccupied, because-despite my having spent the week recopying the viola part onto a few manageable pages-the com poser now rushed in with a completely new part. He had, in fact, rewritten the com position.

On the evening of the performance, I was hastily erasing and copying new notes at six thirty to be performed at eight. Incidentally, it was one of those rare days in May, raining like proverbial cats and dogs. At least by con cert time the country western band had quit, but the smell of barbecue lingered outside the auditorium. Yes, we did complete the premiere perfor mance, and I'm not sure what the audience thought about it all, but when I arrived home, I had a big glass of wine and practiced saying "No! ... no! ... no!" -Pamela Goldsmith, AVS vice-president, holds a DMA from Stanford University; she also attended UCLA, Mannes, and George Peabody College. Her principal viola teachers were Paul Doktor, William Kroll and William Primrose. Currently teaching viola and pedagogy on the University of Southern California faculty, she is well known in chamber music circles and as a soloist, having participated in numerous first performances of contemporary music. Her articles on the application ofscholarly research to performance style have appeared in The American String Teacher, Strad, and JAYS.