Three Pieces for Violin and Piano

early June--August 23, 2014
Duration: about 22 minutes

Full Score, PDF Cover
(all three pieces have orchestral versions linked below)
There are three versions of the violin part. One is legal-size, which is convenient for page turns on paper. The next is letter-size, and the third is for electronic music readers, with the violin part large and including reduced piano staves.
Violin Part, Legal Violin Part, Letter Violin Part, E-Reader

Recordings and videos below are from the premiere performance by Eric Pritchard and Greg McCallum at Duke University, January 11, 2015. (Program)

Audio in both videos and mp3 recorded by Rick Nelson at Duke; sound track added to videos by VoChor.

Waltz For Our Time

(August 6--23, 2014)

Moderato [7:20]
MP3 recording Wav file (CD quality)

video (YouTube)

The first piece in this collection was the last to be written. I like waltzes and have written several over the years.

. Orchestral Version

phantom of the opera

Diatonic Phrygian Tetrachord

(July 20--Aug. 6, 2014)

Adagio andalusia [7:50]
MP3 recording Wav file video (YouTube)

The second piece was inspired by the radio. On July 6, 2014, WNYC broadcast “The World’s Most-Used Musical Sequence”, which was an hour-long compilation of musical excerpts demonstrating the use of the Diatonic Phrygian Tetrachord. NPR followed up with five minutes on Weekend Edition on July 20. Despite the forbidding academic name, this series of four notes, with many modifications, has been used for centuries by musicians all over the world.
The basic sequence is four descending notes with the pattern whole step, whole step, half step. On a piano keyboard, one example would be the four white notes going down starting from E. This composition uses the Diatonic Phrygian Tetrachord both unmodified and highly modified in pretty much every way I could think of, frequently with several modifications simultaneously, in a reasonably contemporary idiom. I will leave it to musicologists yet unborn to deal with the analytical details, as I have some pride in not having opened a music theory book since 1975, and I don’t want to have to look things up.

Orchestral Version

Mozart's Twelve-Tone Row
(June-July 2014)

Allegro assai: Half Fast: Tempo I: Moderato: Tempo I [6:14]

MP3 recording Wav file video (YouTube)

The finale (the first to be written) is a modern take on the most dissonant music written by Mozart; the final half of the final movement of his 40^th Symphony. This section starts with what is very nearly a twelve-tone row. What I have done here, as I have done several times in the past, is to see what I would do with the key ideas of this piece written in my own style and form. This is by no means an arrangement of the original, but instead is an entirely new work. (Never fear—as I have never written in the twelve-tone style, which I find obnoxious in the extreme, I have not done so here either.)
Orchestral Version

          Over the last decade I have preferred to write pieces from about 15 to 25 minutes long; this is most suited to the kind of music that I write. In our fast-paced era of minute attention spans, what people want is music of much shorter duration. Almost all composition contests are for very short pieces. I have frequently urged performers to consider playing single movements, but this happens infrequently. As a result I decided to write some short pieces for violin and piano that could be played together for the same effect as a single piece, but which would each stand alone.
          All three pieces have orchestral versions.

          These three pieces were first performed at Duke University on January 11, 2015, by Eric Pritchard, violin, and Greg McCallum, piano.
          Accidentals hold through the measure and not beyond, and do not refer to other octaves. Eric Pritchard edited the violin parts.

Musician Biographies

Pianist Greg McCallum performed across North and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia in some of the world’s most prestigious concert halls. He won many honors in piano competitions, and frequently appeared on radio and television. His recordings have been featured in Gramophone, Fanfare, and Clavier magazines.
A dedicated teacher, McCallum maintained a private studio of advanced students who have won honors in regional and international piano competitions. In both his performing and teaching, McCallum was greatly influenced by the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education. Greg McCallum died in 2016.

Eric Pritchard, violinist, has been a member of Ciompi Quartet since 1995 and was formerly the first violinist of the Alexander and Oxford Quartets. Mr. Pritchard has taught at Miami University, San Francisco State University, City University of New York and the North Carolina School of the Arts. He was winner of the National Federation of Music Clubs Award in Violin as well as the first-prize winner at the Portsmouth (England) International String Quartet Competition and the Coleman and Fischoff national chamber music competitions. He has performed widely as a recitalist and as soloist with the Boston Pops and orchestras in Europe and South America. His major teachers were Eric Rosenblith, Josef Gingold, Ivan Galamian and Isadore Tinkleman and he holds degrees from Indiana University and the Juilliard School. He has performed many works by Bill Robinson since 2006.