Viola Concerto

My Viola Concerto unfolds in a large slow-fast-slow arc, within which numerous smaller “mirrors” are embedded. Each of the three movements – Hymni (“Hymns”), Continuum, and Nāenia (“Lullaby”) – traces its own, slightly off-kilter ABA shape. Much of the work’s material grows from the interval of a fifth – or its inversion, the fourth – heard in melodic chains or stacked into harmonic blocks. These chords multiply into the rotating chorale-like progressions that underpin each movement.

Typically, these underlying chorales move at a measured pace, even when the music’s surface appears animated. This is most apparent in the central movement, where a fast, ticking pulse – a kind of perpetuum mobile – is continually subdivided into short, irregular groupings. By contrast, the phrases of the outer movements contract and expand spaciously.

Throughout, the solo viola seeks to escape the gravitational pull of the chord cycles and draw the orchestra into a more linear, lyrical idiom. In a sense, this is the pivotal conflict: the pull and tension between the viola’s living, breathing monody and the orchestra’s steady, processional harmonies.