Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano “Chaconnesque”

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My Sonata No. 2 “Chaconnesque” for Violin and Piano was begun in late 2019 and completed in December 2020.  The impetus for this piece was the opening harmony and a desire just to explore and enjoy it.  Like a traditional chaconne, this work features a repeated harmonic progression, this one consisting of nine harmonies with the first, fifth, and ninth being the same.  However, in my piece the harmonies are stretched out over a much longer period than usual with each usually lasting between twenty and thirty seconds.  I wanted to take time exploring these beautiful harmonies in different ways and fully basking in them, which presented me with the challenge of how to create a compelling musical narrative that doesn’t become boring or too static when there are essentially only seven different harmonies (excepting some small changes) used in a 15-minute-long work.  The solution was to create more contrast through the other musical elements such as texture, voicing, dynamics, tempo, and playing techniques.

The music cycles through the harmonic progression four times throughout the piece.  The first time features the piano holding the harmonies while the violin plays improvisatory cadenzas above it which climb higher and higher.  The music finally “takes off” and jumps into the second cycle where the harmonies are always activated through repeated arpeggios and tremolos, creating a thick and continuous wall of sound.  The third cycle finally introduces silences and rests, using only short fragments tossed between the two instruments and sharp contrasts of timbre.  The fourth and final cycle is a kind of condensed summary of the first three, lasting only a fraction of the length of the others while shifting between the characters and textures of each.  The piece then ends with a return to the beginning chord which finally slowly floats away as the violin descends back down to earth.

Winner, 2021 Howard Hanson Ensemble Prize from the Eastman School of Music

Premiered May 4, 2021 by Nicholas Shaefer-violin, and the composer at the piano at the Eastman School of Music, Rochester, NY.