JAVS Spring 2023

Feature Article

Arthur Bliss’s Viola Sonata by Andrew Braddock

“The viola is the most romantic of instruments,” wrote Arthur Bliss, several months after the premiere of his Sonata for Viola and Piano (1933). The work stands as a significant achievement in early twentieth-century chamber music for viola and is the result of a fruitful collaboration between the composer and the performer, Lionel Tertis. While it is lesser-known than other contemporaneous works, its aching and twisted lyricism, virtuosic writing for the instrument, and monumental scope make it a commanding artwork worthy of any violist’s attention. Because his continually searching mind was unsatisfied with preset formulas, Bliss avoids the harmonic and formal blandness that plagues the work of some of his British contemporaries, and instead presses the limits of the twentieth-century British tonal idiom. This article explores the world of the piece that Bliss referred to as “tinged with a romantic melancholy”: Bliss’s early writing for the instrument, his collaboration with Tertis, and the inner workings of the Sonata for Viola and Piano.

I. Bliss’s Early Chamber Music and the War Born in London in 1891, Bliss grew up amongst musical siblings: one brother, Kennard, played clarinet, and the other, Howard, played cello. Bliss studied the piano and continued taking lessons well into his university studies, even though he had long since let go of his ambitions to become a famous pianist. While at the Rugby School as a teenager, Bliss also took viola lessons for one year from a German violinist, Wilhelm Sachse. His teacher, however, was not interested in Bliss as a violist. Upon finding out that Bliss was a pianist, Sachse preferred to spend the lessons reading through Brahms violin sonatas rather than teaching Bliss the viola. Composing gradually consumed Bliss’s musical energies as he went on to earn a BA in history and a Bachelor of Music from Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1913, before enrolling in the Royal College of Music. He studied there for nearly a year before the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. We can already see Bliss’s fondness for the viola in some of his earliest surviving chamber music. Between 1914 and 1915, the 23-year-old composer completed two chamber works: the String Quartet [no. 1] in A major (1914) and the Piano Quartet in A minor (1915). Both were performed during the war years. The string quartet received its public premiere on June 9, 1914, with Bliss’s brother playing cello, and the premiere of the piano quartet occurred on April 20, 1915, during the War Emergency Concert in London, featuring Lionel Tertis on viola. While Bliss was serving in France, his father arranged for Novello to publish both works. After the war, Bliss withdrew the unsold copies and had the plates destroyed for both works. There is scant documentary evidence for the decision, but it can be easily understood when considering the trauma Bliss endured during the war. Bliss enlisted on August 6, 1914, two days after the beginning of the war. His years in the war were punctuated by moments of valor, injury, personal loss,

Figure 1. Arthur Bliss, by Gordon Anthony, 1937.

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 39, No. 1, Spring 2023

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