Presenting at the Society for American Music

In just one week, Hannah and Aimee will be heading to Boston to present a lecture-recital on George Antheil's Third Sonata for Violin and Piano at the Society for American Music's 2016 National Conference. In this lecture, Hannah digs deep into exactly what makes this violin sonata such a succinct example of Antheil's early 1920s Parisian style. Like the earlier two sonatas, Antheil employs raucous rhythmic ostinatos, extensive melodic repetition and development, and a block form in his Third Sonata. This one, however, presents a much more subdued style of writing (for the most part), perhaps pointing forward to his neo-classical compositional development upon his return to the United States in the 1930s.

Of this sonata, Antheil wrote: 

The violin sonata is wild.. the fiddle of the Tziganes, but it seems mostly like Holy Poland. A few of the new themes have a certain shape that I think is totally new to written music... (organized music). It is barbaric, but not the barbarism of the first sonata which is often as not African (thus differing from Strawinsky, who is never African) nor has it the slightest barbarism of the Sacre du Printemps.. not the least. If there is an influence, it is rather Moussorgsky... there is a part at the end which seems like a vast vast hymn sang by thousand of throats (although I make the violin and piano quite sufficient for the occasion, one Mongol, but now Christian, and hundreds of church-bells (not church-bells in America) (God!)... Warsaw, Budapest, the furthermost points of the East. I think that Olga will like it... it gives her more to do, and show off with, than the other sonatas.

(Antheil to Pound, October 1924)

For a sample of what we'll be performing at the conclusion of the lecture-recital, check out our performance of the Third Sonata from last March! 

Hannah Leland, violin and Aimee Fincher, piano (March 21, 2015)