Variations on the
Grosse Fuge
Allegro: Slow: Allegro Bigga Fuga: Largo: Allegro Bigga Fuga:
Moderato I: Piu Mosso: Moderato II: Fugato Bordello: Really Really Largo: Allegro: Big Slow Ending
______(all documents are in PDF format)______________________________________________
Orchestral Version;
Score, legal-size Cover Parts, letter-size f&b________________________________________________________________________________________
Piano Quintet Version;
Introductory talk (Eric Pritchard at premiere; the quartet played the original Grosse Fuge before the VGF) Performed by the Ciompi Quartet and Randall Love, piano, at the NC Museum of Art, January 2009
Score, legal-size Score, letter-size, landscape Cover While a student at
Eastman School of Music in 1973-74, I listened every other night to Beethoven’s
opus 133 string quartet Grosse Fuge
with a couple of friends for at least two months. (The alternate nights were
usually spent with Hammerklavier.) As
a result this string quartet was branded on my brain, which may not have been
the best thing for my early composition style—which tended to the too noisy and
too crowded with notes, not to mention horribly hard to play.
I went to NTSU (now UNT)
in Denton Texas in the fall of 1974, and started working on a string
quintet/string orchestra piece that would be a variation on the Grosse Fuge—re-writing the piece in my
own idiom and with significant differences. After about two years of work it
was premiered at my senior composition recital in 1977. The performance was
rather rough and the recital failed; I left school without a degree. (I
returned to NTSU in the early ‘80s and got a BM in 1984.)
I took a break from
composing in the fall of 1985 to start work on an experiment in transcendental
physics. After moving to Las Cruces New Mexico in the fall of 1986, my project
was at a standstill, and I livened up my life in a desert trailer slum by
composing a completely new variation on the Grosse
Fuge, disposing of the string quintet and using instead five synthesizers.
I had written new and arranged older works for five synths. With this
experience, but not having a synth or any electronic equipment myself, I simply
imagined what I would like the piece to be like and designed it for live
performance. The composition took from January 6 to March 22, 1987. I could
neither find performers nor afford equipment to sequence or record the synth
scores I’d written.
In 2003 I started using
Finale which allowed synthesis, and so put a recording on my first CD in
September 2003. I revised the score in January 2005 but still did not have a
performable piece. I then realized in early 2007 that a string quartet could
take on the most difficult passages, leaving more playable material for an
orchestra with a reasonable skill level. A decent college orchestra should be
able to play this work; the quartet will have to be of professional quality.
During the orchestration I recomposed some sections and made several
improvements. In late 2014, I revised the layout of the orchestral score and
extracted a fresh set of parts.
There
is also a version for piano quintet where the string quartet takes on
considerably more material. As a result it is not simply a version with piano
taking orchestral parts, but rather is a unique and separate rendition. Not
surprisingly, considerable skill for all performers is required for the chamber
version. The piano quintet was premiered by the Ciompi Quartet with Randall
Love, piano, at the NC Museum of Art in January 2009.
With no apology, this
music is intense, hypercomplex, and maybe just a little crazy—as such not so
different from the original; but if a focused listener someday can achieve some
familiarity with the music, I do hope that the sweat required for its
production will have been worthwhile.
Whoever tells a lie cannot be pure in heart—and only the pure in heart can make a good soup.
---L. v. B.