The Viola in My Life: From Bach to Buzzcocks and Beyond

The most famous violist in pop/rock has to be the Welshman John Cale. Of his extensive body of work, I'm only familiar with the two albums he recorded with The Velvet Underground and the ones he produced for Nico. From the Velvets' debut (recorded in '66, released in '67), this is the electric viola-heavy "The Black Angel's Death Song":



On "No One Is There" from Nico's The Marble Index (1968), Cale plays a quartet of acoustic violas:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cale

The first known concerto for the viola was written by the Baroque composer Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767). Like Vivaldi, he has been accused of writing too much -- only a few of his 3,000-plus compositions are performed today. 

In this 1976 recording of the G major concerto, violist Stephen Shingles is accompanied by the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields under Neville Marriner:



muswrite.blogspot.com/2013/11/telemann-viola-concerto-in-g-major.html

The 20th-century German composer Paul Hindemith (below) was himself a first-rate violist so it was natural he should write for the instrument. His viola concerto, Der Schwanendreher (1935), has been described by a violist friend of mine as "pretty tough". It's played here by Tabea Zimmermann with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under David Shallom:



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Schwanendreher

There is a lot of music on YouTube for viola and electronics -- and I mean a lot. I was surprised: the viola's mysterious timbre evidently lends itself well to combining with electronic soundscapes. Michel Banabila and Oene van Geel were the first names in the list when I googled the combination. I liked the title "Nothing But Blue Sky", from their 2014 album Music for Viola and Electronics, and the rest is etc.  

If you'd like to read a review or two, go to the Bandcamp page linked below, scroll down and click on "more" after "(with much thanks to Joeri Mol & Marc...". 



banabila.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-viola-and-electronics-2

At the other extreme in terms of forces is Giya Kancheli's Styx (1999), in all likelihood the last in this thread. Scored for solo viola, mixed chorus and orchestra, Styx is "a farewell to his friends [and fellow composers] Avet Terterian and Alfred Schnittke, whose names are sung by the choir at certain points" (see the link below). I seem to recall already posting Kancheli's Mourned by the Wind (a "liturgy" for viola and orchestra) but where? -- it must have been across the road.

Styx is performed here by two heroes of mine, violist Yuri Bashmet, and, conducting the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, Valery Gergiev, with the St. Petersburg Chamber Choir under Nikolai Kornev:    



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giya_Kancheli

There can't be too many double viola concertos around, but I did run into this one recently by Antonin Vranicky (1761–1820). This is the most information in English I could find about him, tweaked slightly for the occasion: 

"Famous Bohemian violinist, composer and pedagogue of the Classical period. The younger brother of Pavel Vranicky, he was also called Anton Wranitzky abroad. He got his first education at the Monastery of *Premonstratensians* in his hometown. Later he studied philosophy in Olomouc, then law and music in Brno (1778–1782). Then apparently influenced by his elder brother, he left for Vienna. There he took lessons from Haydn, Mozart and Albrechtsberger. For much of his life, he was a bandmaster at the court of Prince Josef Franz Maximilian von Lobkowitz in Vienna, in Prague and at the castles of Roudnice, Jezeri and Bilina by turns. In 1807 he became the director of the Vienna Court Theatre orchestra. He wrote mostly orchestral and chamber music; his abilities as a top violinist are reflected in his works, which are considered difficult even today." [Source]

It was the first movement ("Allegro") of Vranicky/Wranitzky's Concerto for Two Violas and Orchestra in C Major that I heard, in this version by the Münchener Rundfunkorchester under Reinhard Goebel, with Nils Mönkemeyer and Teresa Schwamm playing the two solo parts:

Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) wasn't only a composer but a virtuoso violist to boot. It took me a while to get there but I eventually found on YouTube part of a recording she made, probably in the early 1930s, of Mozart's Clarinet Trio in E-Flat Major (K. 498), with Frederick Thurston (clarinet) and Kathleen Long (piano):



This was the source that got me there (at bottom right):



And here is Ms Clarke's own Viola Sonata (1919), played by Antoine Tamestit (viola) and Ying-Chien Lin (piano):



www.rebeccaclarke.org/her-life/

Much of the music by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) possesses an indefinable quality also found in that of his friend and fellow folksong collector Gustav Holst. Flos Campi (completed 1925) is a good example of that otherworldly aspect. Scored for solo viola, small wordless choir and small orchestra, it was first performed by its dedicatee, the great English violist Lionel Tertis. This performance by Frederick Riddle and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta and Choir dates from 1977. Uploader olla-vogala's excellent YouTube notes are worth quoting in full:

Vaughan Williams played the viola, and frequently professed it was his favorite instrument. Along with the Suite for viola and orchestra of 1934, his most significant work for the instrument is the unusual Flos Campi [Flower of the Field], which combines the viola with a spare orchestral backing of strings, winds, tabor, and celesta, along with a mixed choir that sings wordlessly. It was first performed on 10 October 1925, in London, with violist Lionel Tertis, voices from the Royal College of Music, and the Queen's Hall Orchestra conducted by Sir Henry Wood. The reaction was mixed, and even such close friends of the composer as Gustav Holst admitted themselves puzzled by this subtle and voluptuous work.

In a program note for a 1927 performance, Vaughan Williams admitted "The title Flos Campi was taken by some to connote an atmosphere of 'buttercups and daisies....'" This is, in fact, far from the atmosphere of this work. Each of its six movements is headed by a quotation from the Old Testament's Song of Solomon, and it is the passionate quality of that text which informs Flos Campi.

- The work opens with the juxtaposition of viola and oboe, both playing melodically but in different keys, creating palpable tension. This opening movement is languorous and mysterious, its associated text speaking of the sickness of love, of how it is a "lily among thorns."
- Nature springs to life in the second movement, with the "singing of birds" and the "voice of the turtle."
- But the beloved is not present, and the third movement is passionate and agitated, with the viola accompanied mostly by the women of the choir.
- Men "expert in war" are at Solomon's bed in the vigorous fourth-movement march, in which the violist has an opportunity for some virtuoso display. The music builds to a rather tense climax, at which point we hear the murmuring of voices, over which the viola soars longingly.
- The orchestra takes up this music in a more peaceful strain, and the choir sings in sweet polyphony.
- The opening viola-oboe duet returns, but its ambivalence is resolved as the melodic material of the fifth movement is taken up again in a quiet and magical coda.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flos_Campi

Sad to think that both bassist Paul Gardiner and drummer Cedric Sharpley are no longer with us. Numan scored a minor hit in NL with "Are 'Friends' Electric" but that was all (even "Cars" went nowhere, although Replicas crept into the Dutch Albums Top Fifty). And he got the same panning from the press there as in the UK. Thankfully, times have changed. I have a mass of his stuff here on LP, CD and iTunes, from the "blue" Tubeway Army album to Splinter. I dip into them from time to time.

It was the UK press in particular who latched onto some seeming arrogant statements made by Gary and laid into him mercilessly. Nick Kent was one key offender. Now it seems Gary has a touch of Asperger, which explains a lot. I think the Dutch just didn’t understand him, the way Dutch film critics often miss the point of UK films!

The most interesting area of Gary’s music is what I call his "doldrum years", post Warriors and pre Sacrifice, although a little tends to go a long way.

So your wife is a multi-instrumentalist. We are fortunate enough to have Joshilyn Hoisington on board, who is pretty proficient on just about everything. And, to stay on topic, she plays violas on this "isolation recreation" of the wind and strings on "ITBOMM". But everything on her YouTube channel is worth investigating.

Sarah Kirkland Snider in the "women composers" thread led me to investigate the vocalist she uses, Shara Worden (Shara Nova since her divorce). One member of Ms Nova's band The Brightest Diamond is the violist *Nadia Sirota*. Here she can be heard performing "Letter O" from Tesselatum by Irish composer Donnacha Dennehy, together with Liam Byrne on bass viols (see link below for a detailed explanation of this work):  



www.tessellatum.com/about