A Violinist’s Blog
A Violinist’s Blog
An appreciation of Rory Boyle’s Such Sweet Sorrow
Rory Boyle’s Such Sweet Sorrow
a realization of Farnaby’s ‘Loth to Depart’
for solo viola
Rory Boyle’s Such Sweet Sorrow is an important addition to the solo viola repertoire and I hope this brief study will encourage other viola players to give it serious consideration. It is based, as its subtitle suggests, on Giles Farnaby’s Loth to Depart from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and it follows this fairly closely. However, such is the composer’s skill that it is never quite clear what is original and what is not. There is a blend of old and new which is perfectly balanced and just how this is achieved is quite mysterious!
Such Sweet Sorrow is beautifully and idiomatically written for the viola. It has its technical challenges, but there is nothing insurmountable or unreasonable about its double-stopping and chordal passages and it repays detailed work. The opening repeated A played on each string in turn is a nice touch, providing a study in colour, bowing, position-changing and subtlety, and reminds me of the infamous passage in Bazzini’s Ronde des Lutins, but with very different intent and effect!
Farnaby’s original comprises 6 statements of the theme with a slight lengthening of the final statement, giving the equivalent of 100 bars of the viola piece. Such Sweet Sorrow however has 6 (16-bar) statements and a 12 bar coda, which starts as if it a new statement, totalling 108 bars. I know the composer well enough to know that a mathematical calculation could not be further from his mind, but I should like to point the beauty of his scheme. The highest note (until the end), top A, comes almost exactly at the halfway point, in bar 55 and this is answered at the end by top D (harmonic) – the opening notes of the theme in ghostly outline. Another important structural point, where the repeated semiquavers start after 4 bars of the 5th statement (bar 68) occurs just about at the point of Golden Section, dividing the piece into 68 and 40 (or 17:10). This is an extremely effective section, where chords punctuate the demsemiquavers, providing hints of melody, harmony and bass line simultaneously.
The piece reveals a steady succession of dynamic levels, pianissimo, piano, mezzo piano, mezzo forte, forte and fortissimo for each of the 6 statements. The 6th statement gradually reduces in volume and the coda sinks from piano to pianissimo. This perfectly suits Farnaby’s scheme, reaching his three rich chords (and their ‘realization’) at the start of the 6th statement at fortissimo – a master stroke!
Unlike Farnaby’s original, Such Sweet Sorrow does not keep the statements separate. There are sometimes hints of what is to come which means that there seems to a gradual transformation from statement to statement despite the clear cadences at the end of each and the change of dynamic. For instance, at the end of the first statement, where the theme is presented very simply, there emerge some gentle decorative ideas, one of which recurs twice in the second statement, at the end of a new accompaniment idea (ultimately derived from the original) and this in turn is elaborated.
A great deal of the piece comes from Farnaby’s piece, so it is quite challenging to attempt to describe why this piece sounds so new. There are no great dissonances: indeed, one of the most extreme is the simultaneous F and F sharp in bar 54, a false relation which appears in Farnaby. There are however some wonderfully piquant semitones, tones and ninths which speak out with considerable force, and there are consecutive 5ths used with care and some 4ths which are treated in imaginative ways. One particular technique which stands out is the movement in and out of unisons. Some of these instances occur in the original, too, but sustaining them on the viola rather than the immediate dying away of sound on the keyboard gives them extra effect, especially when distant outer parts of the original are forced together on the viola.
Friday, 6 February 2015