10 Sonatas for Solo Violin or Viola

10 Sonatas for 6 String Violin

       Five of the sonatas (violin edition, #4, 6, 7, 9 and 10) were premiered at Duke University on March 31, 2006 in a program with Eric Pritchard, three of his students, and a friend of mine (Lin-Ti Wang). Eric played Sonatas 1, 9, and 10 on his faculty recital on January 14, 2007. You may see the program here. (Note that in the current edition, what had been Sonata 10 is now Sonata 9, and what was Sonata 11 is now Sonata 10.)  Eric recorded #1, 9, and 10 again in October 2009 with better surroundings, more takes, and some engineering, so those recordings are included here. I gave an introductory talk in '06 (click here for the recording) that may be a touch hard to understand due to the heavy reverb in the hall. A better recording (and shorter talk!) is from the '07 recital here. On August 10, 2014, Eric premiered Sonata #3 at the Unity Center of Peace in Chapel Hill NC, and the videos are posted on my YouTube channel with links below. Many thanks to the musicians.

       Mary Kay Robinson performed the Sonata #4 in Brevard NC on February 15, 2009.

       Below are links to all ten scores in PDF format, much more convenient than downloading each movement in Finale.  (There had been 11 sonatas until late November 2015; I have eliminated the old Sonata #8, using its middle movement for the first movement of the old Sonata #9 to make the new Sonata #8. The old #10 and #11 are now #9 and #10.) 

      In 2002 I made a version of the first three sonatas for 6 string electric violin. In March 2017 I started a new attempt at playing violin again, which I did every ten years to no avail. In hopes of playing 6 string violin, I arranged all ten sonatas for 6 strings. However my arthritis once again made all this futile.  Note that this arrangement has considerable differences from the original, in order to take full advantage of the instrument. In addition, in 2002 I arranged the Bach Sonata #1 and Partita #2 for 6 string violin, and I completed the difficult copywork into Finale on March 25, 2017. Those two arrangements have their own web page.

       The arrangement of the ten sonatas for 6 string violin led to major changes in several of the 4 string sonatas and improvement in many details of the copy work, layout, and typo correction. This led to the second edition of the ten sonatas in both violin and viola versions. Earlier versions should be discarded. The extant recordings are all of the first edition; it will take some time to have recordings of the second edition.

       Those violin sonatas that have not yet been performed are marked with an asterisk (*). None of the viola edition or 6 string versions have been performed or recorded to date (July 2022).

        The  cover photograph (included here to the upper right) is of me playing violin at age about 11.

        The 10 Sonatas for violin and viola are available in legal-size (8.5"x14") and letter-size (8.5"x11") formats. The legal-size has no page turns in each movement. The letter-size has a few such page turns, but is suitable for electronic music readers, and is more convenient for paper printing and binding. The violin and viola editions are corrected to July 10, 2022.

10 Sonatas for Solo Violin   Legal-size  Score (PDF)    Cover

                                     Letter-size    Score (PDF)      Cover

10 Sonatas for Solo Viola   Legal-size    Score (PDF)    Cover

                                   Letter-size    Score (PDF)     Cover

10 Sonatas for 6 String Violin   Legal-size   Score          Cover

(note; all recordings are of the edition that was current at the time of performance. Only Sonata No. 2 is of the current edition. The latest edition, from July 2017, has some new passages, especially in the later sonatas. Only the 4 string violin sonatas have been performed to date.)

These solo violin sonatas were written between 1975 and 2003 in a rather complex pattern of starts and stops, composition and disposal, editing and recopying. I wrote a solo violin sonata in the spring of 1975, and based my now-eliminated First Symphony based on its ideas; dissatisfied, I completely re-wrote it in January 1979, saving little from the original. I revised the first movement again in the spring of 1991 and the last movement in 2002. The second sonata came along in 1976, composed for Deborah Moreland’s 18^th birthday as a two-movement work. I rewrote both movements in 1991, and in 2002 reversed their order and added a third movement written in 1991. (In addition, in 1975 I wrote a sonata for solo ‘cello or viola, but discarded it later.)

        In 1979 I decided to write a total of 64 movements in 21 sonatas for solo violin, correlating each movement to a hexagram of the “I Ching”—not by using chance to determine things, as John Cage did, but just as a kind of unifying device and as an illustration of the nature of each hexagram. As I finished the 21 sonatas, my arthritis became severe enough that I could no longer play violin, and the sonatas remained unperformed.

        In 1991 I made an electric violin which I used for six months. It appeared that I was going to be able to play again, so I went back to work on the 21 sonatas, throwing out the weaker movements, rewriting those that had promise, and keeping the ones that were fine as they stood. This made the new total of 16 sonatas with about a third completely new material. However after this six month period I was no longer able to play, both physically and due to other complications. At this time, when I was forced to vacate my dwelling, my landlord threw away all my compositions that had been copied in ink.

        There followed ten years where making music was not possible. In late 2001 and early 2002, I had a stable life studying physics at NCSU, an old piano, housing, and access to a woodshop. I made two electric violins, a 4-string and a 6-string, that I held like a cello, with an assistive device to hold up my bow-arm. I could only play for a limited time before it became too painful, but the new attempt at performance inspired me to rework once again my old solo violin sonatas, including arrangements for viola and 6-string violin. (I located two copies of the old 21 sonatas that I had given to violinists, returned unperformed, and also recovered pencil drafts from the 1991 revisions—thus recovering from the landlord’s editorial judgment.) This led to once again throwing away weaker movements and a radical re-ordering of the remaining ones in sets of three or four to make eleven sonatas that were reasonably consistent. The grouping is arbitrary, though, and in performance it is perfectly respectable for the violinist to pick whatever movements seem appropriate and play them in the order of his or her choice.

        By spring of 2003, it became clear that the arthritis was too advanced and my attempt at a return to performance had to end. Now I rely on others to perform.

        In November 2015 I was making a revision of the copywork and making an experimental arrangement for cello, when I realized that the eighth of the eleven sonatas had two weak movements. I kept only the middle movement, and made what had been #9, 10, and 11 the new #8, 9, 10, with the old middle movement now the first movement of the new #8.

                    In February 2017, I started to gather new instruments and adaptive gear for a new attempt at playing violin, starting with a 6 string fretted violin from China that I converted to 4 or 5 strings. Part of that effort is to recopy the old arrangements of the first three sontatas made in 2002 in ink, and converting them to Finale, along with some improvements. In July 2017, I completed all ten sonatas for 6 string, and finished the proofreading by August 16. These are considerably different from the originals in order to take full advantage of the new instrument. Many of the movements are intended to be performed with the "freeze" sustain electronic effect, typically controlled by pedal. For further details, please see the title page of the 6 string edition. Unfortunately, I was unable to continue playing and had to quit in the fall of 2017.