Located in the UK
Located in the USA
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- Esa-Pekka Salonen
Pentatonic Étude (2008)
- Chester Music Ltd (World)
Programme Note
I wrote a short solo viola piece, Pentatonic Étude, in 2008 (revised in 2014) at the request of a musician who suggested I compose an étude based on some well-known passage from the repertoire, a common practice in the past. I was intrigued by the idea: how to imagine a piece of music that circles around an objet trouvé, less as a process of variation, more as unveiling an object that was always there, but hidden. I decided to use mostly traditional viola techniques, but push them to the extreme, keeping in mind the Oxford Dictionary of English definition of the word étude: a short musical composition, typically for one instrument, designed as an exercise to improve the technique or demonstrate the skill of the player.
I chose the famous black-key pentatonic passage from the first movement of Bartok’s Viola Concerto. Despite its obvious ear-worm qualities it is challenging technically, so I decided to write a piece that travels from the "negative” of the matrix of five black keys, i.e. from the five white keys C,D,F,G,A to the black keys Db,Eb,Gb,Ab,Bb through gradual transformation of the chord. In fact this journey takes place twice in the piece: white→ black → white → black.
At the end of the Étude, after a long arpeggio passage, the beautiful Bartok phrase is revealed in its original form.
Esa-Pekka Salonen
I chose the famous black-key pentatonic passage from the first movement of Bartok’s Viola Concerto. Despite its obvious ear-worm qualities it is challenging technically, so I decided to write a piece that travels from the "negative” of the matrix of five black keys, i.e. from the five white keys C,D,F,G,A to the black keys Db,Eb,Gb,Ab,Bb through gradual transformation of the chord. In fact this journey takes place twice in the piece: white→ black → white → black.
At the end of the Étude, after a long arpeggio passage, the beautiful Bartok phrase is revealed in its original form.
Esa-Pekka Salonen