JAVS Spring 2013

Other companion pieces for viola and organ include:

mony, music history, orchestration, music apprecia tion, and viola! All the while she played with the Smith College and Bennington string quartets (1937–1946). She enjoyed a recital career where she actively promoted new music for the viola and made her successful Carnegie Hall debut in 1957. Quite an author, Rood contributed articles for music journals including one in 1944 titled “A Plea for Serious Viola Study,” published in the proceedings of the Music Teachers National Association. She wrote for the Smith College archives and authored An Introduction to the Orchestra Score , published by Kalmus. As if this were not enough, Rood was the chairman of the New Valley Music Press (dedicated to the publication of American works), and she pro moted works for viola including the Telemann 12 Fantasias for Viola Unaccompanied and Old Dances for Young Violists , both still available from McGinnis and Marx. With Etler’s compositional exploration of neo baroque/neoclassical styles and Rood’s interest in performing contemporary music and re-acquainting violists with Baroque music, what else could result but a contemporary sonata for viola and harpsi chord? In this sonata, Etler exhibits the conflicting symptoms of that generation of American composers who were searching for an authentic musical lan guage. On the one hand Etler writes with classic clarity (including a sensitivity for balance in struc ture), uses a traditional four-movement construct, creates a chromatic language within the context of continuous motivic manipulation such that it would put a smile on Mozart’s face, and explores the sonorous qualities of the harpsichord, an instrument abandoned long before in favor of the more power ful and expressive pianoforte. On the other hand he uses a thoroughly mid-twentieth century concept of dissonance disassociated from traditional function, employs angular melodic fragments and motivic ele ments juxtaposed with closely knit chromatic lines, and places disparate speeds of harmonic rhythm as a developmental procedure in a continuous kaleido scope of imitative development within a fluid sense of rhythmic pulse.

Joseph Ahrens (1904–1997) : Sonate Frank Michael Beyer (1928–2008) : Sonate Rayner Brown (1912–1999) : Sonata Thomas Christian David (1925–2006) : Variationen

Walther Geiser (1897–1993) : Sonatine Lars-Erik Rosell (1944–2005) : Anima

Otto Siegl (1896–1978) : Weihnachts-Sonate , op 137 Heinz Tiessen (1887–1971) : Musik für Viola mit Orgel , op. 59 The Leo Sowerby Foundation re-released the sheet music for Poem (via Theodore Presser; item number 494-02007) in the 1990s.

Sonata for Viola and Harpsichord by Alvin Etler (1959) Dedicated to Louise Rood

The lives of composer Alvin Etler (1913–1973) and violist Louise Rood (1910–1964) crossed at Smith College in 1949. From this came the Sonata for Viola and Harpsichord and other well-crafted pieces. Etler, an accomplished oboist by performance medi um, was interested early on in composing; he received two Guggenheim Fellowships for composi tional study and wrote two youthful works for the Pittsburgh Symphony at the request of Fritz Reiner. Etler studied with Paul Hindemith and, like many others, was strongly influenced by the music of both Bartók and Copland. Searching for an “American voice,” he explored jazz, serialism, and neobaroque/neoclassicism. Etler found approbation when joining the faculty at Smith College in 1949, where he remained until his death in 1973. In an otherwise gentleman’s profession, violist Louise Rood can only be described as a strong, enterprising woman with no small amount of pluck. She gradu ated from Juilliard Graduate School of Music in viola performance in 1934 and taught at Sweet Briar College before joining the faculty at Smith College in 1937. At Smith, her teaching duties included har

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