JAVS Spring 2013

semi-staging of the solo viola would seem to be his torically acceptable interpretations for the work based on Berlioz’s instructions and comments.

position as a violin soloist, as was the case with many of the musicians who played the solo part of Harold in Italy during Berlioz’s time. 10 The New Berlioz Edition of Harold in Italy includes an appen dix that lists eighty performances of the work during Berlioz’s lifetime; the vast majority of the soloists were primarily known as violinists. 11 There are a few names that are recognizable today, such as Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst (1814–1865), Ferdinand David (1810–1873), and even Joseph Joachim (1831–1907), who performed the solo with Liszt conducting. Karl Müller (1797–1873) performed the solo several times in Brunswick with Berlioz con ducting. He was the concertmaster for the duke’s orchestra and the first violinist of the Müller Brothers Quartet. 12 The fact that he played the Harold solo—and not his brother, the violist of the quartet—further emphasizes the notion that viola players were not considered soloists and ranked below a violin player when selecting a soloist.

Choice of Soloist

Another performance practice issue that arises because of Harold ’s unique genre is the question of who plays the solo viola part. For a concerto, mod ern conventions typically involve the hiring of a famous soloist to perform the solo part with an orchestra. However, Harold is not a concerto, but a symphony. The convention for symphonic works with major solo parts or instrumental personifica tions of “character” roles, such as Strauss’s Don Quixote and Ein Heldenleben and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade , normally calls for the principal string player to perform the part. Today, both options for choice of soloist are feasible: it is not unusual to see a famous viola soloist perform the Harold part, such as Lawrence Power’s performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in January 2012, but an orchestra more commonly features its own principal violist. However, in Berlioz’s time, the choice of using the principal violist was often overruled in favor of the concertmaster, who would reserve the first right to perform as soloist. In the nineteenth century, the Harold solo was often played by a violinist. At that time, to be a viola special ist was practically unheard of, and many viola solos were performed by violin soloists. As Maiko Kawabata observes, “There was no viola faculty at the Paris Conservatoire during Berlioz’s lifetime, and no appointment made until as late as 1894.” 8 Moreover, the viola players in the orchestra were usually selected from the worst players of the second violin section, or from those rejected entirely from the orchestra. Berlioz lamented this neglect of the “noble instrument” in his Treatise on Orchestration and explained that “when a player could not manage to keep his place as a violinist he went over to the viola, with the result that viola players could play neither the violin nor the viola.” 9

Stylistic Considerations

As Berlioz’s own descriptions in his Memoirs previ ously revealed, Harold in Italy was originally com posed for Paganini. 13 However, when Paganini aban

Kawabata asserts that in order to be a viola soloist in the nineteenth century, one must have first secured a

Chrétien Urhan (Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Musique, Est.UrhanC.001)

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