Marshall Fine Sonata for Double Bass on Jason Heath's Contrabass Conversations

I just found this podcast episode that features a performance my brother Marshall's excellent 1997 Sonata for Bass and Piano.

You can listen to it here. The piece begins at 6'26" and goes for about 40 minutes.

John Chiego, bass
Deborah Heath, piano

Recorded live at the University of Memphis on February 14, 1998

Homage to A.T. (13:06)
Scherzo: La Vendetta (5:12)
Warrington-Variations (20:55)

You can read some posts I have made about Marshall here.

We are working with the music library at the University of Memphis to make Marshall’s unpublished manuscripts (like this piece) available in their collection.

UPDATE: I found program notes (written by Marshall in the third person).

SONATA FOR BASS AND PIANO

The Bass Sonata op. 90 (1997) was written especially for John Chiego and his “TK” (Thomas Kelischek) bass, which could play a tone-row in natural harmonics, all the way up to eleventh partial). Having been moved by Chiego’s complaint that few composers (mainly bassists) seem to have the courage to write at length for it, Fine had in mind at the outset to create a piece of major bass repertoire. But what he actually achieved is nothing less than the largest piece ever written for bass (the actual premiere was timed at about 39 minutes). The difficulty of the sonata is also notorious; though Fine worked closely with Chiego, rewriting, providing ossias or adjusting tempi, he kept receiving reports that other bassists such as the legendary Frank Proto were still complaining. The premiere by Chiego, on February 14, 1998 at the University of Memphis, so far appears to be the only known performance.

The end movements are tributes to women composers--mostly from Memphis though one from elsewhere, the folk singer Joni Mitchell, is also given tribute--through thematic allusions.

Ann Taylor, whose violin miniature Gerald’s Tree (on Georgia O’Keefe’s painting) is part basis for the sonata-form first movement with introduction, was a violinist in the Memphis Symphony Orchestra from 1979-1994. Fine had actually played the piano part of Gerald’s Tree for Taylor at its premiere by the Mid-South Composers Forum. Fine preserves the whole piece inviolate (merely adding his own interludes to develop the material) as the ostinato-based main theme and the harmonic-filled second theme, and then blends in with it for his closing section Mitchell’s theme, loosely based on “Songs to Aging Children Come”, a fitting choice since it well described the 41-year-old composer in his own perception, and is based on agonizing Neapolitan relationships. The recapitulation further darkens the prevailing mixolydian D of Taylor’s piece to a chromatic D minor, producing a funereal atmosphere that persists to the end.

Darlene Warrington was an amateur composer whose student piece, Mixdorian, came to Fine’s attention in 1985 (at which time he played it with their composition teacher Donald Freund on one of his studio recitals). Evidently it impressed Fine--though it took another twelve years to expand it into the variation finale of the Bass Sonata. Fine uses only the opening section of Warrington’s work and evolves eight variations: a humoresque that turns the theme’s very first phrase into a palindrome, a scherzo, a fierce march, a “Ricercar a Dodici Toni” (twelve-tone ricercar) based almost exclusively on bass harmonics, a dirge, a romance, a fanfare with bass cadenza, and a sonata-form final variation heavily influenced by bop jazz. It turns out that Taylor’s material is compatible with Warrington’s, and accordingly the three themes of the first movement are blended in, each paired with a motive of Warrington’s.

The second movement, La Vendetta, is the only one not based on music by female composers; instead it is a humorous portrait of Chiego in rondo form. The nature of the “vendetta” is musical. “In two of the episodes,” Fine admitted, “I decided to make the bass behave as outrageously as he had on the occasions that inspired them, taking quick fixes on the music that was performed in context of these tirades.” In the first, he did this by borrowing the theme from Hindemith’s sonata op. 11 no. 4, paired with a motive from the Beethoven overture Coriolan--to which is also added a soggetto cavato motive derived from the name Rosenbaum (a former, brief-tenured faculty violist). The last episode uses a small motive, the final flourish at the end of the “Firebird’s Variation” from the Stravinsky ballet. As Fine relates the story, it appears that Chiego misinterpreted a gesture by Fine and flew into a rage at him during a rehearsal. “It was over some intonation between the bass harmonic and the piano, something insoluble. So I decided to satirize it by blowing up the intonation problem from a microtone into a whole step.” This is done by making the motive--in extreme augmentation--the object of a violent polytonal argument between the bass and piano. That Fine was able to give his judgment on such absurdities so diplomatically--that is, in musical form, and in such high artistic value--is something for which he was never given credit. In any event, there is no doubt that it kept Fine and Chiego fast friends.

UPDATE

Thanks to the kindness of Michael Hovnanian, who send me a scan of the (clear and clean) manuscript, you can find the music on this page of the IMSLP. It is also available here.