A Practical Guide to Twentieth-Century Violin Etudes with Performance and Theoretical Analysis

Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2004 A practical guide to twentieth-century violin etudes with performance and theoretical analysis Aaron Michael Farrell Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Music Commons Recommended Citation Farrell, Aaron Michael, "A practical guide to twentieth-century violin etudes with performance and theoretical analysis" (2004). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 1263. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/1263 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO TWENTIETH-CENTURY VIOLIN ETUDES WITH PERFORMANCE AND THEORETICAL ANALYSIS A Monograph Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in The School of Music by Aaron M. Farrell B. M., Eastman School of Music, 1994 M.M., Louisiana State University, 1996 August 2004 To all of the teachers in my life ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my mentor, Kevork Mardirossian, for all that he has done for me since 1995. A great deal of what is expressed in this paper about violin playing, technique, practicing and musicianship is derived from what I learned in my lessons with Kevork. He has been an inspiration as a teacher and a performer, and I am eternally grateful for having had the opportunity to work with him. I would like to thank other members of the LSU faculty, as well. Thank you, Dr. Robert Peck, for agreeing to be my theory advisor and for your help with the writing and editing of this monograph. In particular, I am grateful for the information about historical and theoretical terminology, as well as the advice about writing and the use of very specific language. I also appreciate your generous gift of time throughout this project. Thank you, Lee Philips, for your advice about terminology and for your many years of support and friendship. I am extremely grateful for the musical support, responsiveness and inspiration, which added so much to my performing life. Thanks, Dennis Parker, for your chamber music lessons, your love of twentieth-century music, and the inspiration as a musician and a teacher that you provided over the years. My inclusion of biographical material about each composer was, in many ways, modeled after your string literature class. I offer many thanks to Dinos Constantinides for his time and for our conversation about his collection of studies and his background. Our talk was beneficial, informative, and interesting. I am grateful to Dr. Jeffrey Perry for his assistance with the information about John Harbison and maximalism and for our prior work on twentieth-century theory. Thank you so much, Stephanie Young! Your typing and computer wizardry were both time-saving and mind-saving. You are the Picasso of the paint program, and the iii graphic examples in Denisov and Petrič are testament to this fact. Thanks to Vini (Carlo Vincetti Frizzo) for the library assistance and, most of all, for our collaboration on your compositions (which played a vital role in the genesis of this project). Thanks, also to Tommy (Thomas) Oswald and Hanna Kim for the Sibelius assistance and the many laughs. I am grateful to the publishers who allowed me to reprint musical excerpts in this document. Those publishers include Breitkopf and Härtel and C. F. Peters. In addition, the excerpts from the collections of Hindemith and Henze are used by permission of European American Music Distributors LLC, sole US and Canadian agent for Schott Musik International. Thank you to all of my friends and family, who supported me throughout this time—even those who never thought I would finish. My friends Craig and Stephanie, Thomas and Le Khin, Charles, and Cason provided, inspiration, guidance and moral (or shall I say empathetic) support through these trying times. To mom, dad, and Frank, thank you for encouraging me to “get it done” and for your support. Mostly, thanks for my life and the part you have played in it. Like most of the people on this list, you must realize that you are very much a part of the paper’s dedication “To all the teachers in my life.” Lastly, but certainly not least of all, I come to my wife, Borislava. Of course, I must tell you first how much I appreciate your help with the examples and the advice about violin playing, technique and practicing. I learn and draw inspiration from you each day. Thank you also for your patience during this long, all-consuming process. You are my partner, my friend, and my love. iv PREFACE The twentieth century is now behind us, yet today’s violinist does not possess, or is not aware of, a canon of etudes that relate specifically to the literature of this time period. Violinists learn and perfect (as much as possible) the core of studies by eighteenth- and nineteenth- century pedagogues/composers. Even the progression of study, in terms of development and level of difficulty, is fairly well established. Students generally begin with scales and simple studies by Otakar Ševčik and Henry Schradieck, then progress to longer etudes by Rudolphe Kreutzer, Pierre Rode, Jacob Dont, Pierre Gaviniès, Federigo Fiorillo, and culminate with the more difficult studies of Henri Wienawski, Nicolo Paganini and Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst. Naturally, these studies are designed to address technical and musical issues of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century repertoire and are written using a similar language and style. The violinist then relies on this core of studies to stay in shape and improve mastery over technical issues for repertoire of all time periods throughout his/her career. The problem inherent in this approach is that music of the twentieth century does not adhere to nineteenth-century principals, forms, aesthetics, and so on. The use of tonality as a musical language changes beyond recognition, and even disappears, in the twentieth century (except, to a certain extent, with regard to the neo-classical, neo- Baroque and neo-Romantic repertoire of certain composers). Along with a complete change of the musical language comes a reevaluation of the sonic possibilities for each instrument. For further information on this topic, see The Contemporary Violin: Extended Performance Techniques by Patricia Strange and Alan Strange (2001). This book contains information and examples on a vast array of techniques, timbres and v effects for the violin, and includes an extensive bibliography, discography, and repertoire list on this topic. Not surprisingly, the technical and musical challenges that one faces in this repertoire have little or nothing to do with the core of studies by the above-mentioned eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors. Until now, a violinist would be forced to meet new challenges in the twentieth- century repertory itself. Overcoming technical problems while attempting to learn new music can be frustrating. The player must solve a technical problem while contending with unfamiliar notation, unconventional sounds and musical language, and (possibly) limited rehearsal time. My reason for writing this paper relates to my own feeling of exacerbation from precisely this issue. It first occurred while learning George Crumb’s eclectic masterpiece Black Angels (1970), for electric string quartet, and has recurred several times since then in my young career. In Black Angels players are forced to play the (electrified and amplified) instruments in unconventional ways to produce unfamiliar timbres and sounds, chant and speak in several different languages, and play various percussion instruments throughout the piece. The quantity, difficulty and unfamiliarity of the tasks makes the performers feel overwhelmed during the learning process. On another occasion, while learning Carlo Vincetti Frizzo’s Celestial Horizons for string trio (2 vlns., vla., unpublished), I distinctly remember wishing that I could work on a study for octatonic scales and collections to help my ears and hands become accustomed to their idiosyncratic nature. The piece uses exclusively the three different transpositions of the octatonic collection. This collection (and other synthetic scales) are strange and unpredictable to the ear and cause problems for the left hand, since the hand vi position is often extended beyond the normal octave framework. Consequently, the appearance of such collections in solo, chamber, and orchestral literature can confuse and frustrate the unprepared violinist. Studies that set forth problems of the type described in the above-mentioned literature do exist, but until now, a violinist would find it almost impossible to locate one to suit a particular purpose—something akin to finding a needle in a haystack (or a book stack). vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………....iii PREFACE………………………………………………………………………………....v ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………….....x INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 ANALYSIS OF COMPOSERS AND STUDIES………………………………………..15 Hindemith, Paul: Übungen für Geiger (Studies for Violinists, 1926)………………...15 Ysaÿe, Eugène: Dix Preludes, op.35 (1928? Published

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