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Howard Boatwright was born in Newport
News, Virginia, in 1918. He began the study of violin in
Norfolk at the age of eleven under Israel Feldman, a
pupil of Franz Kneisel. He played his first full length
recital at fourteen, and made his orchestral debut
playing Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole with the Richmond
Symphony when he was seventeen. He was first violinist of
the Feldman Quartet, an organization that still exists in
Norfolk, and he played solo recitals and concertos with
orchestras in Virginia.
In December, 1942, Boatwright made his New York debut at
Town Hall. In March of 1943 he was appointed Associate
Professor of Violin at the University of Texas (Austin),
and in June he married Helen Strassburger, a soprano he
had met at the National Federation of Music Clubs
Competition in Los Angeles in 1941. Howard gave recitals
and was soloist with the Austin and Houston symphonies.
Helen sang in opera in Austin and San Antonio. Together
they toured Mexico in the fall of 1944.
In 1945, Boatwright left his position at Texas to study
theory and composition with Paul Hindemith at Yale,
fulfilling a latent desire to compose that had been
pushed aside during his early years as a performer. In
1948, after three years of study, Boatwright (at
Hindemith's instigation) joined the Yale faculty as
Assistant Professor of Theory. For his theory classes at
Yale College, Boatwright wrote his "Introduction to
the Theory of Music" (Norton, 1956).He was also
conductor of the University Orchestra and concertmaster
of the New Haven Symphony; and he performed in many
chamber music concerts in New Haven and at the Yale
Summer School of Music at Norfolk, Connecticut.
As Director of Music at St. Thomas Church in New Haven,
he gave a series of performances of old music in New
Haven (1952–64), and at the Metropolitan Museum in
New York (1954–59). Some of these performances
appeared on LP discs; the A. Scarlatti St. John Passion
won a Grand Prix du Disque when it was released on Lumen
(France) in 1958.
In 1959, Boatwright went to India on Fulbright and
Rockfeller grants, where he taught and studied Indian
music in Bombay, conducted the symphony, and gave
recitals and broadcasts with Helen over All-India Radio.
A major project during this year in India was a study of
South Indian violin playing, accomplished in two extended
visits to Madras, where his teacher was T. N. Krishnan,
one of India's greatest musicians.
Upon returning to the U. S. A., Boatwright turned his
attention to editorial work on the papers of Charles
Ives, which had been donated to Yale. His edition of
"Essays Before a Sonata and Other Writings"
appeared in 1962 (Norton).
In 1964, Boatwright was called to be Dean of the School
of Music at Syracuse University. After a Fulbright Grant
to Romania in 1972, he returmed to teaching, and retired
as Professor of Music Emeritus in 1983.
About his approach to musical composition, with particlar
reference to the works on this compact disc, the composer
has provided the following notes:
My music has always been tied to the circumstances of my
musical life, as it has been with most composers.
Consequently, the music written during the years in New
Haven was primarily choral (because of the connection to
St. Thomas Church), or chamber music (because of the many
concerts at Yale).
The change from New Haven to Syracuse in 1964 brought a
change also in the motivations for composing. There was
no specific need for church music or chamber music, nor
was there any need to hold on to or to teach according to
the ideas of my mentor, Paul Hindemith - in particular,
his antipathy to the modern Viennese school. An important
influence in Syracuse as a colleague and friend was the
violinist, Louis Krasner, whose early recording of the
Berg Violin Concerto I had treasured since the
twelve-inch disks came out in the early forties. Krasner
had been a Syracuse faculty member since 1949, and was
the founder of the Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music.
Through him, with his many anecdotes about the circle of
Schoenberg and performances that he gave or arranged, I
was exposed to more music of the Viennese school than
during the whole nineteen years in New Haven.
A result of this change of environment was that I decided
I had to come to grips with fully chromatic music not
relying on tonal fumctions for its clarity of form and
expression. I began to experiment with methods of
regulating an even flow of chromatic pitches with methods
that did not, however, rely on pre-arranged tone rows.
The resulting music would therefore be totally chromatic,
but not "serial."
The String Quartet No. 2 was the first
work in which I felt that I had fully grasped the
possibilities of this technique, though since then I have
applied it in various other media. It was commissioned by
the Syracuse Society for New Music, and was first
performed on April 20, 1975 at the Everson Museum in
Syracuse by the Manhattan String Quartet. The same group
with some changes of personnel, made the LP recording,
CRI SD (1984), which has been digitally re-mastered here.
The String Quartet No. 2 follows
traditional formal outlines: 1) a sonata-allegro with
development for the first movement; 2) a long-lined,
expressive slow movement; 3) a sprightly scherzo
employing bouncing bows; and 4) a rondo finale which is
introduced by a partial repetition from the second
movement.
The Clarinet Sonata is one of a number
of works including the clarinet that began through my
friendship with Keith Wilson, professor of clarinet at
Yale. My Clarinet Quartet (1958), which
won the publication Award of the Society for the
Publication of American Music in 1962 was dedicated to
Wilson. The first performance of the Clarinet
Sonata was given in Liverpool, N. Y. in 1984 by
Ralph D'Mello, a pupil of Keith Wilson. The version on
this CD is a digitally re-mastered tape of a concert
performance in 1988 by Michael Webster and Barry Snyder
at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, N. Y.
The Clarinet Sonata, like the String
Quartet No. 2, is traditional in its formal
prodedures, though not in its tonal language. The four
movements are:
1) sonata-allegro with development and recapitulation; 2)
a large song-form;
3) a light-hearted scherzo; and 4) a rondo with a
somewhat march-like main theme and lyrical contrasting
sections.
In 1976, I gave an interview for Yale's Oral History
Project (directed by Vivian Perlis). The interviewer
asked me what I had written for the violin, since I was a
violinist. I had to answer that I had written chamber
music including the violin, but nothing of a solo
character. When she seemed surprised at that answer, I
searched for a reason, and said that I had probably been
inhibited by the fear that Howard Boatwright, the
violinist, would be too critical of Howard Boatwright,
the composer.
Some months later in March 1977 I was at a party in
Syracuse following a concert of music by John Cage. I had
met Cage several times in New Haven and New York, but
when we were introduced on this occasion, he gave me an
unrecognizing look. Some time later, he came across the
room and said, "I'm so sorry, I didn't know you were
you!" As we talked, Cage told me that he was taking
"violin lessons" with Paul Zukovsky in
preparation for writing a set of violin pieces; these
turned out to be The Freeman Etudes (1977–80).
I thought immediately of the realization brought to the
fore during the Oral History interview described above.
Why should Cage, who was not a violinist, be writing a
set of solo pieces, while I, a violinist, had not? About
a month later, after this unintentional nudge by John
Cage, I started to write the Twelve Pieces for
Solo Violin . I gave the first performance at
Syracuse University in February, 1978, and played them in
several concerts elsewhere, including one in New York.
The version here is a digital remastering of the tape
from the first performance.
The Twelve Pieces reflect my experience
with the unaccompanied sonatas and partitas of Bach, and,
in some ways, the etudes and caprices from Kreutzer and
Rode through Paganini and Wieniawski. Of course, they are
not able to make use of the recurring scale and arpeggio
patterns of diatonic major and minor keys. Nor do they
use the common effects explained in orchestration books,
such as tremolo, pizzicato, col legno, sulla tastiera,
artificial harmonics, etc. The forms are varied: there
are five fugues, lyrical pieces (Prelude and Nocturne),
etudes (three Caprices), a fantasy, and a chaconne with
variations. Although there is an over-all plan for the
design of the whole set, the pieces can be performed in
various smaller combinations. As studies, they can be
used to prepare diatonically-trained fingers to cope with
twentieth century music. - H.B.
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