Viola Solo: Black and Grey

Written in 2016/2017 and revised in 2020 for solo viola (20 minutes)

This piece is an extremely rare instance where I completely revised a piece. The original piece, written in 2016/2017 was about the same length but much more note-heavy, with a large number of gestures and microtones, huge leaps, and some unprepared and immature uses extended techniques. In short: it was a sloppy mess with a lot of things that I thought I “should” include in the piece. The original composition was never performed but workshopped with the person whom I wrote it for; writing this note several years down the road and after the revision/rewriting, I’m really happy the original version of the piece disappeared.

I don’t remember who said this, but a famous composer told a former teacher of mine that “revisions are for cowards.” That outlook is a little harsh for me, but I typically commit to a piece once it’s finished. Not everything is or can be perfect; while I care deeply about my work, I try not to be too precious about it when I’m the one making the final cuts and the ultimate decisions. But sometimes you just go with your gut and if something doesn’t work – if something never worked – then I’m happy to move on and do what I need to do, even if it took a few years to get there. At the end of the day, the piece was never performed, so I could just lie and say that it was a new piece in 2020, but that seems to deflect my story with this piece and the process of the piece becoming “simpler,” more straightforward, perhaps having the core idea more flushed out and thoroughly explored.

That said, ideas from the original piece can still be found. I appropriated them for a later viola solo: Encore/Eulogy and the structural core of the original composition was used in the revision process. While Encore/Eulogy also differs significantly from the original Black and Grey, the seeds of that original version grew out in many interesting and unexpected ways. In the case of the version of Black and Grey you’ll find on this page, the piece is stripped back to the core idea of a chant-like processional of tones with several dovetailed and a melancholic, lingering melody extended to the pure interaction of tones.

Special thanks to Kathy Crabtree for bringing this piece back to life.