JAVS Fall 2012

lin pieces for her friend Sidney Tretick, who was the first concertmaster of the Phoenix Symphony. Tretick was a concert violinist and studio musician whom she met in Los Angeles in the 1940s and later convinced to come to Phoenix. Kerr fashioned this work in the Russian Impressionist style of Alexander Glazunov, and it is designed to imitate the balalaika of Russian folk music. The work includes special effects of harmonics, chromatic runs, and the use of drone strings. The double-stop measured tremolos in the viola are particularly difficult while the violinist performs extremely high cadenza-like runs and dou ble-stop passages (ex. 3). The manuscript for Orientale seems to be in the same hand as the Etude (which is not Kerr’s own). The appearance of these professional copies could indicate an intent to have them both published, however, having been in the music recording business in New york City, she may not have wanted to go through the extensive process of getting her works published. Five Character Pieces for Viola and Piano The five viola and piano works are all short character pieces without dates (MSS-90, Box 3/folders 13–17). 9 While these works have been published as a collection entitled Five Character Pieces for Viola and Piano , they were originally composed as separate pieces. Kerr’s viola and piano pieces have colorful and descriptive titles as follows: Habañera ; Las Fatigas del Querer ; Berceuse ; Lament ; and Toccata. The expressive viola writing in these works is not extremely difficult and could be mastered by an

advanced student of the viola. The manuscripts for Habañera, Berceuse , and Toccata have been copied in ink and show signs that they were performed at one time, including fingerings and markings for per formance. The scores to Las Fatigas del Querer and the Lament are in pencil with many corrections. All of the manuscripts contain both a score and part, except for Lament , where the viola part is lacking. Kerr wrote many of her violin and piano duos dur ing the 1940s, so it is likely that she wrote her viola and piano duos around the same time while she was playing viola with the Pasadena Symphony and liv ing in Los Angeles. Betty Lou Cummings, a former professor of piano and organ at Northern Arizona University, recalls accompanying Kerr on the viola and piano pieces at Kerr’s Los Angeles home in the late 1940s. 10 Habañera and Las Fatigas del Querer may have been written for Kerr’s friend Marie Escadero, who was a professor of Spanish at ASU. Habañera cap tures the flavor of the traditional Spanish dance and is somewhat similar to the Spanish-influenced pieces of Ravel and Debussy. The work is characterized by short phrases, two-bar echo effects, triplet figures interspersed with duplets, and catchy rhythms. The viola assumes the role of a flamenco singer with piano accompaniment rather than guitar (ex. 4). Las Fatigas del Querer is an idiomatic Spanish phrase that translates as “the sorrows of loving.” In a score to one of her violin pieces with the same title, Kerr wrote: “Free treatment of a Spanish folk song,” and “not even tears can relieve the bitterness of the sor

Example 4. Louise Lincoln Kerr, Habañera , mm. 1–3.

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