Echoes of Autumn

For viola and guitar (freely based on the first of the five movements of Otoñales by Antonio Ruiz-Pipó as a tribute to his memory)

Antonio Ruiz-Pipó and I met only once. In 1987, we spent a few days together at a guitar festival in France. It was soon after I learned of his death early in 1998 that Olivier Chassain invited me to write a work for his duo with violist Pierre-Henri Xuereb. Almost at once I was struck by the idea of attempting a direct musical tribute to Antonio Ruiz-Pipó. And all this coincided with my first acquaintance with his Otoñales (1994), which consists of five brief movements, each dedicated to a different artist. The first, in particular, has a poignant autumnal feeling; a sequence of linked motifs and expressive harmonies threaded together around a slow, sad drone. This is the movement which is dedicated to Olivier Chassain, a significant champion of Antonio Ruiz-Pipó in his extensive contribution to recent guitar literature.

I resolved somehow to bring all these strands together, aiming at a metamorphosis of the original poetic miniature into a prospect of Spring. The shapes and intervals of the motifs are relived, with the sap rising, the drone still present but quickened, and a longer span to development and melody. Antonio’s slow pulsation is on C, my more animated ‘echo’ of it is raised to D. In a brief, more conversational, episode, it does however drop to C, precisely for the purpose of echoing Antonio’s Autumn a little more nearly. The subsequent coda steps abruptly back to D, heralding Spring with a brightness and vigour to banish all melancholy. 

Stephen Dodgson, January 1999