Thom Ritter George

SONATA FOR TUBA AND PIANO, CN 307 (1980)
 

PROGRAM NOTES

Thom Ritter George's SONATA FOR TUBA AND PIANO was composed from March 19, 1980 to June 26, 1980 in Quincy, Illinois.  The SONATA is part of the composer's longtime project of writing a solo sonata for every orchestral instrument.  The work was written for Daniel Perantoni, an outstanding tuba artist and Thom Ritter George's friend since their student days in the early 1960s at the Eastman School of Music.

The actual pre-composition process for this SONATA and others in Dr. George's sonata series stressed two important factors: (1) the formal design was planned first and before looking for specific musical content; and, (2) the musical personality of the solo instrument was studied very carefully so that its resources could be evaluated for musical potential.  Let us look at these tow factors more carefully.

Most skilled musicians realize that the individual movements of a multi-movement piece should have common elements which bind the piece together.  At the same time, the very nature of these movements should provide contrast within the composition.  It makes sense to plan the general outlines of the whole composition before looking for specific notes, themes, harmonies, and rhythms.  This assumes that the composer views composition as a structure, much like building a house.  Of course, other composers search for specific musical materials first, then they try to see how these ideas are best organized for satisfactory musical results.  In both cases, composers are trying to bring the musical form and the musical content into the best relationship for the piece at hand.

Thom Ritter George most often uses the first of these methods, outlining the form, choosing the number, tempo, and mood of individual movements.  Important key relationships are chosen at this point since they have a powerful effect in the musical outcome.  After this groundwork has been established, the composer begins his search for musical ideas which hold the best potential for carrying out the plan.

Dr. George has always found the creation of musical ideas to be the easiest part of the work.  Many themes and motives are commonly invented before settling on the most suitable for a specific formal section.  It is most important to devise ideas which have the capability of development, ideas which can display more than one personality.  For example, sketches for the first movement of the SONATA FOR TUBA AND PIANO show some forty measures of thematic material which was worked out and finally rejected in favor of the music which forms the finished version of the first movement.  None of the music in the initial sketches seemed to have the right development potential, exactly the right focus and forward drive to implement the overall plan which had been invented in the pre-composition stage.

Evaluating the particular characteristics of the tuba was the other necessary pre-composition task.  One role of the instrument is its historic one, that of a slow moving, fatherly musical personality in the orchestra and band.  It is a personality of considerable authority, and it is probably the predominating personality envisioned by Hindemith is writing his famous TUBA SONATA.  But given recent improvements in the instrument and especially the dramatic advances in playing the tuba, this view is limited.  In the hands of a fine artist, the tuba can have considerable agility, a sense of humor, and a good expressive range.  The natural tone production of the instrument is somewhat diffuse in character, and this should be taken into account by any composer writing for the tuba.  Also, if a composer is to make a real contribution to the repertoire, he should provide new ways of looking at the instrument through the music he composes for it.

The first movement ("Vivace e con brio") employs the more agile aspects of the tuba's musical resources.  Here we find extensive use of leaps with the piano commenting on the boisterous motives of the solo part.  The music is cast in sonata-allegro form, each theme and section being brief in duration.  Dr. George chooses to de-emphasize the weight of the first movement in relation to the others.  Unlike composers of the Classical and Romantic schools, he prefers to shift the emotional and musical weight of the music to later points in multi-movement works.  He feels this gives better balance to the work as a whole.  The ending of the first movement gives the feeling that "more is to come," rather than "here we are at a great moment in the composition."

The second movement ("Vivace assai") is a quick moving scherzo, probably a distant descendant of the composer's scherzo in his QUINTET NO. 1 FOR BRASS INSTRUMENTS written in 1965.  In the SONATA FOR TUBA AND PIANO, the scherzo is written in A-B-A-B-A structure, a form beloved by Beethoven and used by him in many of his important compositions.  Here the music is playful in nature.  The piano's characteristic motive is a forte eighth note followed by two piano eighth notes.  The tuba has somewhat different music, again using leaps and playing longer phrases.  The "B" sections (trios) seem quite sustained in contrast, but the forward motion is always continued.  Each return of the "A" and "B" sections is written out since each return is shortened from the previously heard version.

The title of the third movement is "Ballad: Mesto."  The theme itself is an old American folk song known as "Brave Wolfe," of which the first stanza reads:

    Bad news has come to town, bad news is carried,
    Some say my love is dead, some say he's married.
    As I was a-pondering on this, I took to weeping,
    They stole my love away while I was sleeping.

The modal, melancholy nature of the theme is attractive in its own right and makes a striking contrast to the animated themes of the other movements.  The composer is partial to muting brass instruments in lyric movements to provide a change in tone color for these moments.  The theme itself provides constant and fluid shifts between 3/4 and 4/4 meter as each line of the text is sung.  This feature is retained in the SONATA, and this movement is the expressive center of the work.  The mood is further enhanced by use of A-flat as the tonal center for this Aeolian mode melody.  A-flat stands in a minor subdominant relationship to the outer movements.  There is an individual color to this key (seven flats) which is unlike others using "white key" notes.  This slow movement is in variation form with all the variations being quiet and lyric in character.

The SONATA ends with a fast dance ("Ben ritmato") similar in nature to other finales from brass instruments found in Dr. George's works.  Since many different meters are used (4/4, 7/8, 6/8, 3+3+2/8, etc.), the composer has not written any specific meter signature.  Instead, the music is organized by measure lines for the convenience of the players who are asked simply to play the notes and rhythms they find in each measure.

This final movement is organized in sonata-allegro form, but the first and second themes appear in reverse order during the recapitulation.  Interestingly, both the first and second themes are fast and hard-driving.  Here, the piano asserts itself more strongly than in the other movements and has more direct interplay with the musical ideas forwarded by the tuba.

Particular attention has been given to the Coda.  It follows closely on the heels of the recapitulation and shorted first theme, rounding off the finale but also providing a brilliant conclusion for the SONATA as a whole.
 

(TRGcm:1989.04.12; Rev. 1997.11.23)