JAVS Spring 2025

In the Studio

Partita Party: A Collaborative Work for Solo Viola by Atar Arad and Friends by Rose Wollman

The performer-composer has a long and storied tradition. Bach was an exceptional keyboard player (and violist) and performed his music in churches and courts throughout Europe. Mozart was a violin and keyboard prodigy, performing for the highest echelons of European society from an extremely early age. Liszt, Chopin, and Paganini made their fame touring and performing their own compositions. For some reason, this practice fell out of fashion. I have my guesses as to why, but this is a dissertation topic for someone else. In any event, the performer - composer is back! And back in stunning form. There is so much exciting music these days being written by those who are also performing it. The major players here are too numerous to list, but even in our own viola corner of the world there are stunning examples: Garth Knox, Nokuthula Ngwenyama, Jessica Meyer, and of course Atar Arad.

In early 2023 I received a phone call from Atar, my mentor during my time at Indiana University. He had a new idea for a piece, and wanted to know if I would like to be involved. I barely let him explain the project before blurting out “of COURSE I would!!” Having said yes, I learned that we would each be writing a movement of a partita modeled on J.S. Bach’s Violin Partita no. 2 . Atar had already written the Ciaccona , and he asked his former students Yuval Gotlibovich, Melia Watras, Duncan Steele, and myself, to write the other four movements of the piece. Dear readers, this is when the imposter syndrome kicked in, because in that list of stunning examples I mentioned above I would definitely include Yuval and Melia. (Duncan doesn’t have the same size output yet, but he is definitely a young’un in the same league.) We chose our movements: Duncan took the Allemanda , Yuval the Corrente , Melia wrote the Sarabanda , and I got the Giga. To make sure the piece was unified, we decided on a few ground rules. • We would each start our movement on E-flat, the same note with which Atar begins his Ciaccona (Bach begins each of his Partita movements on D). • We would generally follow the form and at least pay homage to the spirit of our chosen dance movement. • We would also allude, at some point, to the tone row that Atar uses in his Ciaccona . endeavor, it is easy to be paralyzed by too many options, and establishing constraints can help the ideas flow. We went on our individual ways to write our movements while Atar and Kim Carballo (a collaborative pianist and director of the Jacobs Virtual Academy at Indiana University) organized the events for our planned visit to the IU Jacobs School that fall. As the newest of the group to composition, these guidelines were a huge help to me. In any creative

Atar Arad performing during the Partita Party concert. Photo courtesy of Rose Wollman.

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 41, No. 1, Spring 2025

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