JAVS Spring 2013

composers were naturally influenced by their teach ers but also by the strong current of compositional popularity of the time—Schoenberg and serialism, Bartók, Copland, Hindemith, and Stravinsky; folk music and the power of nationalism; the magnetic influence of jazz; and, to a certain extent, the elec tronic experiments beginning in the 1950s. Add to this mix the strong influence that was the restless ness of the “American” spirit that ran through the halls of music schools in the first half of the twenti eth century with an unspoken desire to establish a decidedly “American” musical language. That spirit shows itself by the choice Sowerby and Etler made in selecting the accompanying instruments of organ and harpsichord, respectively. Finally, a strong vio list—William Primrose and Louise Rood—influ enced each composer. Leo Sowerby (1895–1968), an organist by perform ance medium and a composer of over five hundred works, gained early recognition as a composer with his Violin Concerto premiered in 1913 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Sowerby can be placed in a school of “American” composers that would include Howard Hanson, Walter Piston, Virgil Thomson, Randall Thompson, William Grant Still, and Bernard Rogers. Poem is a large-scale work of some fifteen minutes that finds its musical roots in the late Romantic styles of Sibelius, Franck, and Respighi. It was completed on November 8, 1941, and premiered by William Primrose (1904–1982) and E. Power Biggs (1906–1977) on April 5, 1942, at the John Hays Hammond Museum for Biggs’s regular Sunday morning broadcast on the NBC network. The viola part, originally published by H. W. Gray, is well edited including bowings, finger ings, and propitious double stops. The difficulty is that the publisher did not release Poem until 1947. By that time Milton Preves (1909–2000), the long-time princi pal of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, had taken up the piece. We are not sure just who put in the editorial fingerings and bowings or how Poem might have devel Poem , for viola and organ by Leo Sowerby (1941) Dedicated to William Primrose

oped between the premiere performance with Primrose and its publication.

What we do know is that Sowerby and Primrose met in 1946, and out of that meeting came the orches trated version of Poem . Primrose performed this orchestrated version at least twice—once with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on July 1, 1948, under the direction of guest conductor Eugene Ormandy at the summer concert series at Ravinia and again with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra on February 14, 1950, with Thor Johnson conduct ing. 1 Currently Peter Slowik, Director of the Division of Strings and the Robert W. Wheeler Professor of Viola at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, has Poem in his repertoire and performed the orchestrated version with the Richmond Virginia Symphony during the 1996–97 season. This solidly constructed piece explores the entire range of the viola and is never compositionally dom inated by the organ. The formal structure holds the piece together in a grand, but somewhat idiosyncratic, rondo form: ABCABA: • Theme A (ex.1), quickly imitated in the viola, disintegrates fairly soon into a memorable the matic motif; • The transition, which is to return later, is fol lowed by Theme B (ex. 2) in the viola accompa nied in the organ with shadows of the Theme A motif; • Theme C (ex. 3), which is stated boldly by the solo organ is actually an inverted variant of Theme A;

• Theme A returns in the viola in a broad soaring melodic development;

• The return of the above transition moves the lis tener to Theme B in the solo viola. A cadenza like passage elides into the conclusion;

• Theme A.

J OuRNAL OF THE AMERICAN VIOLA SOCIETy 52