Deixo | Sonata

“‘Deixo’ is is verb used in classical Greek to connote both a logical proof and a stylish display of oratory in the presentation of that proof. In our years of working together, Jessica has often requested for a viola sonata, and as I settled down to work on the piece, it struck me that the request is for performance from me as well an opportunity for performance for herself– to compose a piece as squarely in the tradition of sonatas for soloist and piano is to strike a balance between expectation and opportunity, between that which is constitutive and essential and that which is potential and (perhaps) unexpected.

The harmonic and thematic material for the work is derived initially from a transliteration of the letters of Jessica’s name into pitches, and as such the work is both a continuation of the suggetto cavato tradition stretching back to the Renaissance, and of the a series of half a dozen such ‘isentropic semaphores’ that I have written for and of performers and friends. These transliterations are not the focus of the work, which is generally concerned with the rhetoric and forms of the sonata traditions, and the personal of ‘soloist’ so often operative in those works. The work is less of portrait of Jessica and her name than a portrait of the roles and stances she has adopted over the years of our working together, a summa of those modalities in which I love to hear Jessica playing, and which I hope brings her a similar joy.”

The work was premiered by Jessica Meyer, viola, and Stephen Beck, piano on 15 June, 2009 at Merkin Hall in New York, NY.