- Date: 1979
- Composer:
Daniel Welcher - Period: Contemporary (1950- )
Review
This Partita is a masterly essay in handling the special but difficult combination of horn, violin, and piano, three instruments that are completely heterogenous. It is a strong addition to the small repertory for this combination.The most famous work for this formation is the Trio by Johannes Brahms, though Robert Schumann, György Ligeti, and Lennox Berkeley have also made worthy contributions to it.
The opportunity for American composer Dan Welcher (b. 1948 in Rochester, New York) to make his statement this kind of trio came when Michael and Lenore Hatfield asked Welcher for a composition. Of this couple, he is a hornist and she a violinist.
Welcher was then in the early stages of a career that has included numerous commissions for chamber works for a wide variety of combinations. He is known for his deft handling of many sorts of groups. Although he is a graduate of two New York conservatories (the Eastman School of Music in Rochester and the Manhattan School of Music in New York City) the course of his career has been outside the metropolitan music centers of the East and West coasts. For the most part, he has been a member of the faculty of the University of Texas in Austin.
The problem Welcher had to solve in writing this work was how he was going to integrate these three very distinct instruments into a single unified composition. His solution was to make the work a kind of series of etudes on the issue of their distinctness.
The Partita is a major 20-minute work in five movements from three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half minutes long. He decided to base the work on some ideas he had read about group psychology, including the conclusion that three is the worst number for human interactions. In such groups, two usually gang up against one. Or one simply withdraws for a while, leaving two that might then fall into opposition.
Thus, the Partita is a kind of exercise in group dynamics. Welcher often uses the serial vs. tonal dichotomy to symbolize disagreement. In the opening prelude, the horn, in the rich key of E flat, is opposed by the strictly serial music of the violin and the piano. In the ensuing Nocturne, the violin switches over to the horn, isolating the piano.
The third movement, Intermezzo, features violin versus piano. Now, however, the music shifts from an emphasis on disagreement to focusing on agreement. In the fourth movement, Aria, the violin withdraws from its argument with the piano to sing in agreement with the horn, while the piano remains silent. In the finale, Toccata, the piano returns with recriminations, initiating a frank argument among all three voices in which the serial and tonal elements also contend.
Finally, a twelve-tone ostinato continues while the instruments accept a melody in broad E flat. At the end there is total agreement: All three instruments play the horn's opening theme in unison. ~ Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide
Albums with Complete Performances of the Work
| Title | Date |
| White Mares of the Moon: Chamber Music of Dan Welcher | 2001 |
