JAVS Fall 2011

are in and where the phrase is headed. One appropri ate option is to cut measures 177–192—playing through measure 176 then jumping directly to meas ure 193. This allows only one cadence in G major before returning to C major, but it has the benefit of presenting the piano’s most spectacular material exact

ly once. Of course, other cuts are possible; if time is an issue, one could play the downbeat of measure 172, then play everything after the downbeat of meas ure 193. This cut completely removes the piano’s best moments, however, so you should definitely consult your accompanist before making a final decision!

Possible cut from m. 176 to m. 193 in movement III of Mendelssohn’s Viola Sonata

A native of Lombard, IL, Linda Shaver-Gleason has degrees in viola performance from Roosevelt University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. As a winner of the David Dalton Viola Research Competition, she pub lished “Ritter’s Viola Alta: The Viola’s Nineteenth-Century Identity Crisis,” in the Fall 2005 issue of JAVS . At present, she is working toward a PhD in Musicology at UCSB, where she continues to take viola lessons from Helen Callus.

Notes 1 Rebecca Clarke, “The history of the Viola in Quartet Playing,” Music and Letters 4, no. 1 (January 1923): 6. 2 Eric Werner, Mendelssohn: A New Image of the Composer and His Age , trans. Dika Newlin (New york: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1963), 15.

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