JAVS Spring 2020

knowing how close conductors and their principal players can become, that he may just have met C.P.E. and even J.S. Bach. I began working on an arrangement of the Viola Concerto shortly after finding out about it in Franz Zeyringer’s book Literatur für Viola . I was of course intrigued when I saw my own surname on the work, and immediately sought to buy a copy of the sheet music; however, I found out that it existed only in manuscript in the music section of the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB)—the State and University Library in Dresden. At the time, my life was far too hectic to take on the project of finding out more about this piece; but finally—after retiring from my forty-year-long career as a high school music teacher, violist and performer—I made time to pursue the project further.

I got a great deal of help from Dr. David Dalton at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He connected me with Dr. Ronald Schmidt of the German Viola Society. A violist and librarian, Schmidt made arrangements with SLUB to forward photocopies of the manuscript to me. These photocopies were of separate parts, for solo viola, first and second violin, viola and basso. By now I was retired, but no less busy—but eventually I managed to decipher the crudely hand written manuscripts and produce a workable and mostly correct score. Later, my friend Dr. John Selleck made a fine piano reduction from my score, which we performed several times in recital. (Dr. Selleck and I performed together for ten years in Trio Bravo , a clarinet, viola and piano trio.)

Figure 2. Johann Georg Knechtel Concerto for Viola and Strings in E-flat major. Solo viola part. Photocopies of the manuscript. Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden.

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring 2020

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