Fantasy for Viola and Chamber Orchestra

This was a piece I wrote during college. I've always considered the viola an exceedingly underrated instrument with a lack of pieces featuring it as a solo instrument. This is my humble attempt to write a piece for solo viola with a small orchestra accompaniment. I actually wrote this with a spefic person to play it at the time (someone I had a crush on at the time actually...) and had the opportunity to have a playthrough with the university orchestra but unfortunately she got nervous at the last minute so it never got played. It's supposed to be kind of an ironic piece as the solo viola theme is highly arppegiated and still generally accompanies the orchestra, albeit with a bit more virtuosic material.

I've always considered the viola an exceedingly underrated instrument with a lack of pieces featuring it as a solo instrument. [/b]

I take it you may be unfamiliar with the jokes about violas/violists?

Not that they're actually true - and I agree - the viola has a very nice timbre.

Even if it's not in the foreground all the time, you've got some very idiomatic material for the viola in there, and it's there enough to get noticed... similarly in many ways to piano concerti where the piano often accompanies the orchestra. But there are a few places where the viola isn't so effective. Maybe it's just the MIDI, but it sounds like a string crossing exercise at times.

From listening to it, I'm pretty sure I can play it without all that much difficulty, so I might attempt that and comment again afterward.


Since you mention it... it's funny why we decide to write for certain instruments. My horn concerto, which was my first composition, has a similar history. I actually started writing it in high school, with a girl that I had a crush on at the time in mind, but gave up after writing about 30 measures' worth of melody. That was my one and only early attempt at composition. Four years later, I randomly found the notes while cleaning out my room... ironically enough, I'd met another female horn player the previous day. And so I started making a serious effort at composing from that point on.

Of course, neither of them ever played the piece in full - it took more than two years from the time I continued - though both have now actually played individual movements.

Thanks for your input, Caltechviolist. It's defintely playable; with a lot of practice I can read-through it passably though not at the true tempo.

BTW, where do you go to medical school? I'm currently in residency myself, I'm in my last year of my neurolgy residency right now, trying to get back into writing music.

I'm a first-year at USC Keck School of Medicine. Interestingly enough (and you might be able to tell from my icon), I'm most interested in neurology myself. Where are you in residency?

And I take it you're a violist too?

I kind of fit the stereotype as I was originally a violinist but switched to the viola out of necessity as we had a shortage of violists in the orchestra at the time (went from bottom third in the second violins to the first stand in the viola section) but I'm really glad I made the switch since I really acquired an appreciation for it.

I'm currently the chief neurology resident at the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, MA. Keep us in consideration if you do decide to pursue neurology! Neurology seems to attract the more musically inclined (lots of attendings either play an instrument or are serious classical music lovers), we're even trying to start up a piano quartet in our department.