JAVS Fall 2002

23

REMEMBERING MAURICE GARDNER

Concertino for Viola and Chamber Orchestra Premiered by Michael Palumbo with the New American Symphony Orchestra on May 14 and 15, 1999, Ogden, Utah Shema for Baritone, Viola obbligato, Cello, and Piano Premiere to be in October 2002 by Dwight Pounds NOTES 1. Dr. Maurice Riley was author of The History of the Viola, Vol. I and II. He also served as second President of the American Viola Society and was co-host with Dr. Myron Rosenblum of the first viola congress held in North America, Inter national Viola Congress III, held in Ypsilanti, Michigan, in 1975. 2. Prof. Franz Zeyringer has enjoyed a most dis tinguished career in viola research and organiza tion. He was co-founder of the International Viola Society, he initiated the organization of the viola archive that now resides in the PIVA, and he is the author of Literatur for Viola and Die Viola da Braccio. Contributed by Dr. David Dalton, Professor of Viola (Emeritus) at Brigham Young University, third President of the AVS, fourth President of the NS, and host of International Viola Congress VII I was approached in the fall of 1978 by Maurice, then unknown to me, asking if I as the host chair of the 1979 International Viola Congress at BYU would accept a work by him for premiere. This, after sending me a bio, as I remember. I was inter ested but had no money to fund such a work in that all resources from BYU and "Friends of Primrose" were going into another commission that turned out to be George Rochberg's Sonata. Maurice knew of the William Primrose Viola Library (precursor to PNA) at the time, and said if the Library would "commission" him to write a work for viola and orchestra, he would fund it him sel£ After discussion with advisors on the congress, we acceded to his request. Gardner's Rhapsody was the result, and my good friend Jerzy Kosmala, working with Gardner, accepted the request to be the soloist with the Air Force Orchestra.

3. Maurice Gardner graduated from the Juilliard School with a degree in composition. He worked for many years as a writer of jingles and back ground music for television in New York and retired to Florida where he returned to art music. His repertoire consists ofworks for orchestra, string quartets, works for the viola, and other chamber and vocal works. Before his death he scored the Shema both for string quartet and voice and for orchestra and voice. 4. Robert Gardner is a cellist with the New York City Opera. 5. Dr. Dwight Pounds served two terms as Vice President of the American Viola Society and is Past Executive Secretary of the International Viola Society. He is the author of The American Viola Society: A History and Reference. Professor Emeritus at Western Kentucky University, he was reelected to the AVS Executive Board in 2002. 6. The printed list of Gardner's viola compositions consists of those known to the author and may not be definitive. Maurice later told me that this "commission" and its premiere counted as a great motivation for him to write further serious works and especially for his preferred instrument which he had studied, as I remember, in his youth. After graduating from Juilliard as a serious composer, he gravitated to more commercial music because that's where he could earn a living. After retirement, he now had the luxury of composing for what, and the way, he wanted. I was particularly impressed with his Double Concerto for Violin and Viola, which I heard at the Ann Arbor Congress with Endre Granat and Donald Mcinnes, soloists. The first movement, particularly, was stunning. Around 1990 I encouraged Maurice to apply for a grant from the Barlow Foundation at BYU to write a double concerto for two violas of a lighter nature (not another elegy type). This would be for my BYU colleague, Clyn Barrus, and mysel£ We premiered the orchestral version of the Five Bagatelles in 1991 in double concerts at BYU and

ADDITIONAL TRIBUTES TO MAURICE GARDNER