Concerto for Violin
with harp, percussion, and small orchestra
score availability: see below
1985; 1989
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THE VIOLIN CONCERTO with harp, percussion, and small orchestra is drawn from the second act of the opera The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. In that act the vocal parts are accompanied by two interleaved concertos: one for solo violin, associated with the upper part of the Marcel Duchamp painting that is the subject of that opera, the Bride Region; the other for solo piano, associated with the Bachelors. (The piano concerto has not yet been released from the opera, but its solo material is represented by my first piano sonata, Bachelor Apparatus).
    I visualize productions of the opera with the solo instruments on stage, part of the cast and set-pieces. Some of the accompanying instruments, too: a wind quartet, a string quartet, and the percussion. In the unlikely case that the violin concerto is performed as a concert piece, the other instruments — the string orchestra — are meant to be hardly more than a veil of sonic fog.
    In fact the Concerto was performed, beautifully, at the 1990 Cabrillo Music Festival, with Beni Shinohara as the brilliant, totally satisfying soloist, and Kenneth Harrison conducting. Beni asked me, after the performance, what the piece was all about. I was a little embarrassed: well, it’s about the Bride being ready, and the Bachelors never quite engaging. I thought it was something like that, she said.  
    The concerto is scored for pairs of woodwinds and brass (the second trombone optionally doubling on or replaced by tuba), harp, optional piano, three percussionists, and strings, with a solo group of two violins, two violas, two cellos, and contrabass either added to or detachable from the main section.
    There are three movements, but the first has never been completely realized. The other two have been made to serve as three: I: Romance (q = ca. 60); II: Allegro non troppo (q = ca. 60) III: Tensely ( e = 120).
    Most of the music was composed during a summer vacation on the Île-d’Arz, in the gulf of Morbihan, in Brittany.

click here for  .mp3 file, first minute only
Score: first few measures   .pdf score, first movement only
(full score may be available by contacting the composer: charles at shere dot org)
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