Betsy Jolas - Composition Overview

Composition Overview

While continuing to compose for non-standard ensembles (as in D'un opéra de poupée and Points d'or, both 1982), she began in the 1970s to write for full orchestra, often with a solo instrument. Several of these concerto-style pieces are cast in the form of a wordless song-cycle, beginning with the lyrical 11 Lieder for trumpet and orchestra (1977). At the same time she began to make use of the traditional ensembles of chamber music, beginning with the string quartet in Quatuor III (1973), an especially concentrated work cast as a succession of short études each exploring a specific kind of musical material or relationship between the four parts. Given her view of music as ‘sung’ melodic expression, it was inevitable that this reconsideration of the ensembles and institutions of the past would culminate in an opera. Two chamber operas seek in different ways to recreate the immediacy of popular (and ancient) theatrical forms: in the second of these, Le Cyclope (1986), which sets a satyr-play by Euripides word for word (in French), she succeeds in creating a particularly fluid, conversational kind of word-setting. The piece was written as a respite from work on her grand opera Schliemann (1983–93), an epic work on the theme of a lifelong quest which includes much play with different languages and musical cultures. While working on the score Jolas studied some of the operas she most admires, from Don Giovanni to Wozzeck, and occasionally acknowledged her debt in the music: she has no desire to reject the past, and feels able to take inspiration from earlier composers without compromising the integrity of her own, fully contemporary language. Thus she has described the organ piece Musique de jour (1976) as ‘a sort of four-voice fugue’ and ‘a homage to Monteverdi and Bach’, yet these models have been wholly absorbed into the work's own highly individual means of expression. Since about 1990 she has increasingly turned to chamber music as in Quatuor V (1995), that for solo instruments as Come follow for viola (2001), and aesthetically if not literally historicizing works such as Jean Sébastien Bach-Contrapunctus IV for orchestra (2001, chamber orchestra and vocal quartet). Since 1953, Jolas has accrued a host of prestigious awards and honous. She has also had a distinguished career as a teacher, both as a visiting professor in American Universities,including Mills College, the University of Michigan, and Bennington College.