90°, for solo viola (2023)
About the Piece
I was inspired when I watched a video of Garth Knox performing his fourth Miniature for Viola D'Amore, Passarelle, an improvised piece that is played in what he calls a “sarangi position”. This unusual position allows the player to press the string with the nail of their left thumb, creating a different timbre. After incorporating this position into my comprovisatory projects, I started to find new sounds and colors that are either unachievable or hard to make when playing in a regular position.
90° was born out of my attempts to standardize, practice and find a notation for these sounds. The compositional process consisted of establishing a notation for some of the techniques I discovered, and then applying these techniques in a systematic manner throughout the piece so it starts simple and gets harder to play as it goes. The last step of the described process is similar to the way Garth Knox introduces techniques on his Viola Spaces.
There are more techniques and different sounds that can be made in sarangi position and are not present on this piece. I intend to standardize those in future pieces once I am more familiar with them myself.
Due to Garth Knox's big influence not only on this work but also on my viola playing and music writing, this piece is dedicated to him.
The Sarangi Position
This piece is played in sarangi position. That means that the performer needs to be sitting down, with the pegs in between their legs and the bottom part of the instrument, under the chin rest, resting on their chest. It may be easier for some to use a small pillow under the viola to bring the instrument forward: this would give a more natural position to the right arm and the shoulder rest can be supported by the pillow, increasing the instrument’s stability. The trade-off for using a pillow is getting less resonance.
It is also easier to play if you rest your right pinky in the bow like cellists do instead of having it curved and on top of the bow like violin and viola players are used to.
I encourage anyone that wants to play this piece to experiment with the position and decide what works best with their body and their viola.
Soon I realized that interesting effects can be achieved by changing the left arm position. Because of this, there are two types of position used on the piece: "nail position", meaning that that the left arm makes an arch under the tip of the bow and the strings are pressed with the thumb’s nail, and the "above-bow" position, meaning that that the left arm goes around the bow from the top (see image below).
The above-bow position also allows for the right thumb to be placed between the bow hair and the fingerboard, a quite interesting effect, especially when paired with a circular bow.
