JAVS Fall 2006

THE VIOLA-CELLO Duo:

By Claudine Bigelow

O rlando di Lasso. 5 Instrumental composit ions arc more difficult tO identify. ince the development of ilie string fam ily was in its forma tive stages at ilie time, instrumen tal duos poss ibly reAected d1e vocal repertoire of this era. However, typical fo r Renaissance music, none have explicit instrumentation written in the manuscripts. One could also look ro English consort music for viols as a distant ly related predecessor of d1e viola cello duo. T hese composers were interested in exploring counter point with ar least three voices, o ilie duo was avoided and arguably, viols represented a different fam ily of st ring instruments d1an ilie viola and cello. However, the viola-cello duos iliat first appeared in rhe 18th century bear an important connec tion to the viol consort music because they share characteristics of equal voicing and the upper melodic lines were commonly in the alto range. Compositions of O rlando Gibbons, John Jenkins or Matthew Locke's Fantas ias, for example, wou ld fir this description. 6 As chamber music in ilie Baroque period evolved, iliese roles fell out of favo r. Instead, the cel lo became increasingly involved with the responsibili ty of ilie continuo role and d1e viola's alto range was almost always used as an inner voice wid1 less prominence.

absence can be explained by the al l-consuming use of continuo during that period; the scoring of the viola and cello was perhaps too spare a color and not in the correct style without a keyboard in ilie background. Another reason may be that the role of the viola as a solo or upper voice was still in its developmental stages. T he concept of the viola's role was primarily as a harmonic vo ice. The emergence and later great popularity of the trio sonata completely left our the voice of d1e viola and instead focused on two soprano instru ments. Mau rice Ril ey explai ned: The omission ofthe viola from the trio sonata was an unfortunate devel opment that retard.ed the progress of this instrument in many ways. Not only was the viola excludedJrorn the most prevalentform ofinstrumental chamber music ofthe Baroque era, but also composers were failing to rec ognize it as a solo instrument. ' T he end of the Baroque period is when the viola's possibilities in d1e solo capacity starred ro emerge. In 172 1, Johann Sebastian Bach com posed the Brandenburg Concertos. T he sixili concerto was scored for the unique combination of two viola soloists with the accompani - ment of gambas and cel los. Georg Phi li pp Telemann corn posed one of the ea rliest solo viola concerto in 173 1. He composed many other wo rks that featured

At first glance, the basic resources listing viola-cello duos make the genre seem limited to almost no reperto ire. Quite frankly, it is a genre that has been overlooked. For example, Cowling's, The Cello, ' and Peter Allsop's chapter on ensemble music in The Cambridge Companion to the Cello/ fa il ro mention any. This is not meant as a criticism, just an observation of otherwise very usefu l books. One of the largest listings of viola-cello duos in general reference materials is in Literatur for Viola, by Franz Zeyringer/ and ir incl udes approxi mately fifteen works. A few more are listed in Arthur ohn's relative ly recent fou r-volume work, The Literature ofChamber Music.., T here arc however, many more duos ava ilable for this string com bination; over seventy at last count. Composers did not sta rt writing for th is specific duo instru menration unti l the Classical peri od, relatively !arc in musica l hisro ry. T he first documented viola cello duo was composed in 1783 by Johann Georg Albrechrsberger. The richest sources of viola and cello duo repertoire come from the 18th and the 20th centuries. We can trace d1e forerunner of ilie alto and tenor combination tO vocal motets, canzonets and ricer are from the Renaissance, includ ing wo rks by Thomas Morley and

Why is ilie viola-cello duo missing from the Baroque era? Maybe its

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