JAVS Spring 2019

Special Feature

Rochberg’s Viola Sonata in Historical Context Jacob Adams

“George Rochberg’s Viola Sonata is a major addition to the viola and piano repertoire and it deserves many, many performances by other artists.” —Joseph de Pasquale 1 If George Rochberg’s music is known to viola players, it is primarily and understandably because of his 1979 Sonata for Viola and Piano, which is being celebrated in this, the 40th anniversary of its premiere. Rochberg was jointly commissioned by the American Viola Society and Brigham Young University to compose the sonata for the occasion of William Primrose’s seventy-fifth birthday. Premiered at the Seventh International Viola Congress in Provo, Utah by Joseph de Pasquale and Vladimir Sokoloff on July 14, 1979, the sonata’s auspicious origins ensured it would quickly solidify itself as a significant late-twentieth century addition to the viola-piano duo repertoire. This article will give some historical context to the viola sonata within Rochberg’s larger oeuvre and career. Fans of the viola sonata may discover other works by Rochberg worthy of studying, listening, or performing. Given that the viola sonata was written and premiered in 1979, it may come as a surprise to discover that Rochberg took the majority of its musical material from sketches he had written decades earlier—in 1942—only weeks before he was drafted into the army to serve in World War II. These early sketches were for two movements of a planned violin-piano sonata which never materialized. Rochberg would say in his memoir that these sketches “marked a significant change in direction” and that he “had discovered...the musical ‘hieroglyph.’” 2 The ‘hieroglyph’ which Rochberg refers to is in fact what eventually became the opening statement of the Viola Sonata: F–C, B–F-sharp. This pair of intervals outlines Rochberg’s sketches for the Viola Sonata

the fundamental fifths of the two keys bound together by the tritone F–B. Rochberg attributed this discovery to his concurrent study of Bartók’s music at the time (in the early 1940s), which “opened [my] ears to the possibilities inherent in such tonal extensions, which spilled over into new ways of thinking and hearing melodically.” 3 Why would Rochberg return to these sketches some 37 years later? Composers typically scoff at their earlier compositional efforts, especially if left unfinished. But Rochberg’s career and stylistic trajectory was far from typical for a composer of his era. After being wounded and discharged from the Army with the Purple Heart in 1945, Rochberg attended the Curtis Institute to pursue compositional studies with Rosario Scalero and Gian Carlo Menotti. By 1948, he was already on faculty at Curtis, and over the next decade, established himself as a rising star among the cadre of post-Webern serialist composers. Rochberg won major international awards and fellowships, and eventually joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. He also served as music editor for the Theodore Presser Company (still the exclusive publisher of his musical scores). In 1961, Rochberg’s son Paul was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and died in November 1964. This devastating event indirectly led to Rochberg’s most significant career turning point. Rochberg felt unable to fully express his emotional state within the strictures of serialism, and began exploring new approaches. 4 He wrote: The much-vaunted pluralism of our present musical culture is a direct result of the loss of a communicable language; and such a loss is the fallout and heritage of either free or ordered atonality or both. 5 Rochberg’s career before the Viola Sonata

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring 2019

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