LA Composers Project 2013: Richard Valitutto
The name of your piece being performed at LACP 2013 is:
Tell us about it.
For most of my life as a composer (which is, relatively speaking, not all that long), I’ve kept various notebooks or scraps of paper with little musical ideas jotted down on them. Sometimes, I’ll not write down anything for weeks at a time, and then it will only be one measure of music – just a few pitches, harmonies, or basic gestures. At times when I have a specific project in mind, these ideas are more plentiful or involved. Two similarities I noticed about all these collected scraps is that I have a ton of seemingly disconnected, completely unused ideas, and a majority of them came to mind and were recorded at night (like many people, I simply work better and more freely when it’s dark and quiet).
In November 2012, my good friend and colleague Mark Menzies and I performed a recital at the Hammer Museum which focused on Morton Feldman’s epic 80-minute duo for violin and piano, For John Cage. We also performed a substantial first half of shorter compositions for violin or viola and piano by Cage, Feldman, Anton von Webern, and – with mutual coercion – one each by Mark and I. Although slightly absurd in retrospect (the concert was about 3 hours long!), this first half allowed the audience to really attune the senses to Feldman’s lengthy (and quiet!) journey. It also afforded Mark and I each the opportunity to write pieces for one other, and more abstractly – though no less meaningfully – for John, Morton, and Anton as well.
This duo for violin and piano, frammenti notturni, was my contribution to that event, and in it I have included a wide array of some of the aforementioned compositional fragments from over two years of random jottings: many of which were primarily influenced by Cage, Feldman, Webern, and Menzies; their techniques, philosophies, playing styles, distinguishing characteristics, formal structures, etc. Basically, everything in this piece – from its formal plan to very specific harmonic and melodic gestures – comes from and points back to these four people. And it is to the four of them that I owe a great deal of my development as a musician, composer, thinker, and human being. This small compositional offering is dedicated to Morton, John, Anton, and Mark.
Favorite X : Y
Breakfast :: two eggs sunny-side up, link sausage, home fries, sourdough toast, some good cheese, grapefruit juice, and coffee.