Exam: AMEB Viola Grade AMUSA

Etude

RM615e Etude Kerry VLA

Digital Download eScore

Composer: Gordon Kerry
Composed: 1999 Duration: 5 mins.
Instrumentation: Viola Solo
Exam Grade: AMEB Viola Grade AMUSA
ISMN: 979-0-720100-44-9 Catalogue: RM615
Level: D Country: Australia

Written during a Fellowship from the Australia Council, which I was awarded in 1999, my Etude for solo viola was composed for Esther van Stralen, who had given terrific performances of my Viola Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra a few years before.

This piece, which exploits the wide range of tone-colours and technical effects of which she is capable, is very much for her. She is its dedicatee, and made many helpful suggestions about certain practical aspects. Moreover, the piece is built around a musical spelling of Esther’s name heard at the outset: E flat (‘es’ in German), C (from ‘ut’ – the designation of this note in solmisation), B (‘h’ in German), E and D (from ‘re’).

Parardi

0 Comments

RM624e Parardi Kerry VLA/PNO

Digital Download eScore

Composer: Gordon Kerry
Composed: 1988 Duration: 5 mins.
Instrumentation: Viola & Piano
Exam Grade: AMEB Viola Grade AMUSA,
HSC Viola
ISMN: 979-0-720100-53-1 Catalogue: RM624
Level: D Country: Australia

The Warlpiri people of Central Australia tell a story about a great rainstorm that travelled across part of their country, creating the features of the landscape, the plants, animals and people as it went.

Parardi (the Warlpiri word for rainbow) is a response to this story. The opening section is slow, with rather disembodied fragments of melody and rhythm - the calm, as it were, before the storm. The central section is fast and violent, with lots of irregular metres (bars of 5/16 and 7/16 for instance), ‘scrubbing’ on the viola and use of the percussive lower register of the piano. The final section is a transformation of the first, as you might expect in a (rainbow) arch-form: this time the fragments have turned into fully fledged melodies.

Parardi was equal winner of the Bernard Shore Prize Awarded by the Royal Over-Seas League, London in 1988. It was first performed by Marco van Pagee and Stephen McIntyre at the Melbourne Spoleto Festival in 1989.