JAVS Spring 2014

it was to be in one continuous movement. As I recall, the piece flowed out of me quite easily. I even remember being in a line waiting to pick up my teaching credential at the Board of Education in Los Angeles and asking a person to please save my place in line so I could write down a few ideas that were coming to me in a flash. Ah, the muse was very much with me at that time in my life. So, having completed the piece, I put it aside, hop ing that it would not linger long before there was a premiere somewhere, somehow. Shortly after this I received a call from the conductor of the Peter Britt Festival in Ashland, Oregon. His name was John Trudeau, and he had heard something of mine in a recent program and wanted to know if I would be interested in presenting a piece of mine at their festi val. I quickly suggested the concerto, and after tak ing a look at the score, he was happy to give the go ahead. I was to conduct, and Patricia Miller, princi pal violist of the Oregon Symphony, was to be the soloist. (I recently learned that Patricia retired from the Oregon Symphony in 2006, after playing with them for fifty-six years. A commendable career, I must say.) The premiere took place on August 20, 1968, and there’s one aspect of that performance that I’ll never forget. As I walked onto the podium, the first flutist was looking pale as a ghost. She had left her part at home, forgetting to put it back in her folder on the way to the concert. I, being a person who tends to think ahead of things that could go wrong in a concert, had taken the precaution of packing an extra set of parts in my briefcase. I quickly went back stage, got the part, handed it to the flutist—the color in her cheeks came back—and we began the piece. I would say that the audience’s reaction to the piece was exceptionally enthusiastic, and it garnered a standing ovation. The soloist took a number of bows, and when I asked the instrumentalists to stand, there was an even greater response. I believe the audience truly appreciated the musicianship of the performers, especially since none of them had ever heard nor seen the piece before. It was a brave endeavor all round.

Since that auspicious premiere, and because I don’t have a manager to promote my work, the piece has not had a great number of performances. However, when I had occasion to hear the English violist Paul Silverthorne perform with the Santa Barbara Symphony sometime in the early 90s, I chose him for the first professional recording of the work, which took place in Prague in 2000 with Paul Freeman conducting members of the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. This I consider to be a definitive performance of the work. As for the other viola music in my catalog, I must say that the best-selling piece is my Invention for Viola and Tape , which was commissioned by violist Hugh Partridge, who was on the faculty of Wichita State University at the same time that I was on the faculty of Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia, Kansas, in the early 70s. Shortly after his premiere of the piece in 1972, I had a visit from the New york violist and teacher Paul Doktor, who took an imme diate liking to the piece and proceeded to play it around the world on his many concert tours includ ing a performance at the 1977 International Viola Congress at the Eastman School of Music. His stu dent Paul Neubauer, who was eleven years old at the time, performed it at the University of Southern California around 1974. Subsequently violists Cynthia Phelps, Raymond Tischer, Tom Tatton, and Victor de Almeida have performed it, among others. The “tape” part is now, of course, on CD. you might ask about the use of the word “invention” in the title. This stems from my love for the Inventions by J. S. Bach, which I learned as a piano student. Each was so different, so well-crafted and original, and part of a larger collection of pieces with the same compositional endeavors. So I set out to create a series of my own, and now, in addition to the one for viola, there are those for flute, cello, organ, violin, and piano, each with recorded accom paniment on CD. And you might also ask why I chose to write them for solo instrument and record ed accompaniment. There are three reasons for this. First, it gives the performer the freedom to practice the piece without having to schedule rehearsal time with other performers. Second, I had heard a num

J OURNAL OF THE AMERICAN VIOLA SOCIETy 44