Partita for Solo Viola (2024)

Written in adoration of the solo instrumental works of Johann Sebastian Bach, the Partita tells the tragic story of the declining mental state of a dear friend. The music swings between tumultuous energy and distant introverted chaos, focusing on how this journey can affect the surrounding reality; as in this case, I capture the slow chaotic decay of a friend’s descent into schizophrenia and its collision with other elements of my life at that time. Written in a traditional Partita form – Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue – the composition aims to reflect extreme scenes and emotions through this long-form structure, eventually losing all connection to reality.

In addition to the influence of Bach’s repertoire, the structure of the composition is deeply rooted in Partimento, the 17th/18th-century practice of schematic contrapuntal mapping of music through rhetorical form. Serving as a structural template for the other movements, the Prelude establishes the contrapuntal and harmonic ideas that are played out in each movement with varied expression. Throughout the piece there are moments of clarity met by moments of distortion, sometimes trailing off into mindless murmurs, other times aggressively combative, and often deteriorating in sound and content. The Gigue (a fugue in three voices) depicts the final moment of psychotic break. The final moment falsely seems to offer a moment of clarity and affection, referencing the tender Sarabande only to become suddenly lost.

The Partita for Solo Viola was commissioned by Jesse Morrison through a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts and premiered October 26, 2024 at MIT.

October 26, 2024 | Killian Hall, MIT, Cambridge, MA. Jesse Morrison