Memory Etude

Program Note:

Having first appeared at Festival concerts in 2011, Zachary Wadsworth has become a fixture in Staunton each summer. This year we will offer several world premiere compositions by Wadsworth. Tonight we go back to his “early” works with Memory Étude (2008) for solo violin and electronics. Having worked mainly with vocal music, Memory Étude represents his first foray into the world of electronic music. Wadsworth adds the following reflections:

Sometimes, while listening to a piece of music, I wish I could freeze a particularly beautiful moment in time, to savor it slowly and deliberately. But, as we all know, music pushes indelibly onward into silence (preserved only in the memories of those who heard it, or the memory of the musical page). This short piece explores my wish to capture sound. As the violinist plays a plaintive melody, some of its tones are captured and frozen in place by the live electronics, creating a soft bed of harmony out of the melody.

(c) Jason Stell