JAVS Summer 2021

husband, Alfoso Aguirre Dergal, agrees, saying, “Now when she plays solo, I find that it is more colorful, I would even say more refined.” Whereas the viola gets to explore its quieter colors in this ensemble, the guitar needs to embrace its louder, brighter side. Guitarists should not be afraid, especially in passages where the two instruments play in rhythmic unison, to sacrifice some of the warm tone that they would use in solo playing. A warmer tone can then be used to great effect in quiet and solo passages, creating even greater contrast in the music. In a similar way that this combination pushes violists to find quieter, warmer colors, it pushes guitarists to find their louder, brighter voice. Perhaps the greatest challenge of the viola-guitar duo is intonation. The guitar is an inherently out-of-tune instrument. Its intonation is not as fixed as the piano; the intonation shifts depending on the register and position the guitar is playing in. The viola is able to be very flexible with intonation and can adjust while the guitar is fixed. Even with the guitar’s fixed intonation, there are things each player can do to help create the most in-tune sound. Christopher Kenniff advises both players with a reminder of basics fundamental to success: guitarists need to be fluent in alto clef and violists must recognize that the guitar is a transposing instrument—it sounds one octave lower than written. Violist Carlos Boltes helps intonation through score study, a good practice in any ensemble. His focus is learning the guitar’s part and exploring how the viola interacts with it, troubleshooting areas where he may need to adjust as a violist. The violist must be prepared to adjust to the guitar. When struggles arise, singing with the guitar can help violists step away and hear how to fit their line into the guitar’s harmonic texture. Guitarists should consider not only tuning with a tuner and their harmonics, but also focusing on tuning structural chords. This is especially true in combination with the viola, which is going to constantly be trying to fit into the guitar’s harmonies. Players should analyze the work and find important, structural harmonies and tune those chords specifically. If one tunes this way, the viola will have an easier time fitting into the guitar’s sound. More description of this, along with other considerations Intonation

that are very helpful in this ensemble, can be found in the foreword of Roland Dyens’s 20 Lettres published by Editions Henry Lemoine. 2 Another technique the guitarist can use to help with intonation is balancing their chords. This is done by striking each note of the chord at different volumes. If the root of the chord is the loudest note and the third is the softest, the pitches can blend better and sound more in tune. Scott Hill gives another suggestion for the guitarist to help intonation: always have a gentle coloring vibrato. He refers to this as harmonic vibrato. Contrasted with melodic vibrato, it is barely perceptible, but aids the viola in fitting into the harmonic foundation. Performance setup is an important consideration of the ensemble and something that each duo should explore. As a non-standard ensemble, the violist and guitarist have many options for standing or sitting and what side each occupies. The Alturas Duo plays with both players sitting: the viola on stage right and the guitar on stage left. Duo Ditirambo originally started with the violist standing and the guitarist sitting, but later settled upon both players sitting, viola stage left and guitar stage right. Gómez González spoke of their thinking behind this change and the benefits it brought to their duo: I see many duos with guitar and I keep thinking that if you sit down, it becomes a duo instead of viola accompanied by guitar. And that gave us a lot of space to rehearse and to discuss and to explore about gesture, how to develop gestures and the kind of gestures that the guitar did and that I did and how to do gestures together to have the same kind of energy when we play, the same kind of energy to finish the phrases or to start. A general recommendation for this duo is that both players start sitting with the violist on stage left and the guitarist on stage right. This is a good foundational setup. Players can then feel free to explore other setups if they desire. Gómez González notes this performance setup can also aid the balance of the ensemble. Gilbert Biberian also recommends that both players first rehearse facing each other so that they can hear best and then face out when performing so that the audience can hear them. Performance Setup

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 37, 2021 Online Issue

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