Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove
The pangs of guilty power and hapless love!
Rest here, distress'd by poverty no more;
Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before;
Sleep undisturb'd within this peaceful shrine,
Till angels wake thee with a note like thine!
-Epitaph on Claude Philips, an itinerant musician - Samuel Johnson (1740)
Across the ages, music has helped us weather solitude, pain, and loss just as readily as it ushers in life’s most joyous and transcendent moments. Though the cessation of live performance in a pandemic age seems trivial in comparison to the unfathomable human toll, Samuel Johnson’s epitaph reminds us that music’s power to sooth and heal are essential. We look to music as a reliable source of uplift in difficult moments because of the deep web of connections that it both draws upon and subsequently encodes into a living and breathing tradition. Touch Harmonious is a celebration of the balming fount of musical tradition as seen through the particular gaze of the viola.
It is the music of Johnson’s storied milieu that provided seemingly endless amounts of creative fodder for later generations. Though not always immediately apparent, the new and recent music on this recording is in fact inspired from a connection to the Baroque era. The title of Anna Clyne’s “Rest These Hands” is taken from a poem written by her mother in the final year of her life and the melismatic middle section of her piece reveals a quote from the Presto of Bach’s Violin Sonata in G minor, BWV 1001. Dana Lyn’s “endlessly i would have walked” draws from a close study of traditional counterpoint and a deeply personal relationship to the solo string music of Bach as a violinist and violist herself. Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky’s “Short Epitaph” (no relationship to Johnson’s) is based on a La Folia, a progression likely born in the Renaissance but popularized in the Baroque era by luminaries such as Lully, Marais, and Vivaldi. Benjamin Britten’s towering Third Suite for Solo Cello (1971) honors the heritage of the work’s dedicatee, Mstislav Rostropovich, by using as thematic material three Russian songs from Tchaikovsky’s volumes of arrangements and the Russian Orthodox Kontakion, or the Hymn to the Departed, all of which is cleverly uncloaked only at the conclusion of the work. Additionally inspired by Rostropovich’s interpretation of solo Bach, Britten draws on this connection particularly in the Barcarola, echoing the Prélude of Cello Suite No. 1. Other key movements along the way, such as the Fuga and Passacaglia, utilize characteristic Baroque musical forms.
From the period itself is a harmonically beguiling prelude from the viola da gamba virtuoso Carl Friedrich Abel (his father Christian Ferdinand was the viola da gamba player and cellist in Bach’s orchestra at Köthen), the luminous and aforementioned Cello Suite No. 1 of Bach, and, in a nod to the richness of the era’s vocal tradition, the iconic aria “Lascia ch’io pianga” from Handel’s Rinaldo. This work, like others on this recording, reveals a more complex narrative lurking beneath the surface. Written by a German composer, Rinaldo is the first Italian language opera written for an English audience. The story takes place in 11th century Jerusalem, and this arrangement for solo viola was created by Toshio Hosokawa, a contemporary Japanese composer. And though a bit overwrought, it’s lyric “Let me weep over my cruel fate, and that I should have freedom...” poignantly resonates today where so many of us have had to grapple with isolation and distance.
It should be acknowledged that the viola had not reached anywhere near its zenith as a solo instrument in the Baroque, and this is reflected by the fact that there is a good deal of borrowed material on this recording. This is a conscious nod to a common practice of the era, where it was not unusual for composers to arrange the music of others or to repurpose original music in other contexts and instrumentations. By the way, the late and inimitable Dutch cellist Anner Bylsma used to frequently muse that it was Bach himself playing the cello suites on the viola that served as the basis for his wife Anna Magdalena’s copy of the suites (none in Bach’s own hand exists).
A parting wish for your listening is that old has the possibility to sound new and that new might feel familiar. Or better yet, that the music can be
experienced as part of a harmonious continuum, yielding a sense of connection and comfort.
-Nicholas Cords (July, 2020)
credits
released November 6, 2020
Produced by Nicholas Cords and Jody Elff
Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Jody Elff
Recorded, mixed, and mastered in New Paltz, NY (December 2019 - July,
2020)
Art direction and design: Christopher Kornmann for Spit + Image
Artwork: Walead Beshty
Three Sided Picture (YRM), January 12, 2007, Santa Clarita, California,
Fujicolor Crystal Archive 2013
color photographic paper,11 x 14 inches
Photo credit: Brian Forrest
Viola: Patrick Robin - Angers, France 2019 (Pirastro Passione strings -
Damian Dlugolecki A string for Bach)
Bow: Pierre Simon - Paris, France ca. 1860
“Rest These Hands” was arranged for viola by the composer and taken
from a larger work called The Violin (2014).
“Short Epitaph” by Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky (2017) was written for Nicholas
Cords and generously commissioned by Nancy Grover.
“endlessly i would have walked” by Dana Lyn (2017) was written for
Nicholas Cords and generously commissioned by Paul and Mela Haklisch.
Special thanks to: Walead Beshty, Anna Clyne, Dan Coleman, Jody Elff,
Johnny Gandelsman, Maeve Gilchrist, Nancy Grover, Paul and Mela
Haklisch, Dana Lyn, John Ryan Moore, Lucas Page, the Friedrich Petzel
Gallery, and Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky.
For more than two decades, omnivorous violist Nicholas Cords has been on the front line of a growing constellation of
projects as performer, educator, and cultural advocate. He is deeply committed to music from a broad variety of traditions and epochs, with a particular passion for the cross-section between the long tradition of classical music and the polyglot music of today....more
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