PROGRAM NOTE

Last modified 24 April 2022

Aether (1983)
(Violin and Piano)

by Roger Reynolds

Aether is an extended work in which I reflect on the appealing attributes associated with its name. Webster’s unabridged is measured, even wry: “the element formerly held to form the material of the heavenly spheres and bodies from the moon to the fixed stars.” Its elaborations continue indecisive but provocative. I selected four pairs of properties and arranged them sequentially: airy and tenuous, volatile and rigid, continuous and independent, elastic and cooperative. Airy and volatile are are the most extreme, my “outer limits,” so to speak. Each pairing involved the reworking of a shared set of materials, so that each of the four pairs shows two possible behaviors of the same materials.

The violin is retuned so as to facilitate a signature characteristic, an arpeggiated succession of natural harmonics (passing from one string to another) so that, while the harmonic overtones remain consistent, tonal implications are not unduly distracting. This rapid, airy figuration reappears periodically throughout the work in both the violin and the piano parts, implying a continuing (through sometimes obscured) presence.

The pitch material is serial at root, and an arrangement of row transpositions was found that interleaved the overtone successions of the aether figure and other less predictable materials. The possible coexistence of the airy aether and the asymmetrical volatility is revealed by the violin during the closing page of the piece.

I have used the two instruments in idiomatic yet sometimes rather uncommon ways. The violinist, in particular, is called upon to master several novel cross-string bowing and left-hand fingering conventions; the pianist to constantly counter the natural tendencies of inertia.

While composing, I worked closely with János Négyesy and Cecil Lytle, the colleagues to whom the work is dedicated. Commissioned by The McKim Fund of the Library of Congress, it was written in the Spring, Summer and Fall of 1983 in Del Mar. Aether was premiered on 29 October 1983 at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. The dedicateés have recorded the work on the Lovely Music label.