Trajectoires pour Violon et Orchestre by Gilbert AmyReview by: Joscelyn GodwinNotes, Second Series, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Dec., 1970), p. 337Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/896938 .

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patterns of asymmetrically conjoined twos and threes, the pitch relations that are "worked out" but nugatory in functional effect, the thematic transformations, and the bold, if mechanical, use of instru- mental sonority. Missing only is the avian sociology.

The sonata is in three movements, each expanding upon similar thematic and timbral materials. A wide range of nota- tional devices are used, ranging from strict meter and temporal modulations of meter to freely chosen pitches (on the strings) and free durations. There are a variety of performing techniques for playing on the strings: the use of finger, fingernail, soft drumsticks, glissandi up covered strings, and the like.

As a study in piano sonorities, the sonata is a remarkable compendium of harmonics for both keyboard and strings and of carefully thought-out contrasts among sounds produced on the keyboard and those produced in the interior of the instrument. Johnson has a finely dis- criminating ear for these effects, and his use of interior playing does not call at- tention to itself awkwardly as so often is the case. The sonata owes much, in respect to the keyboard harmonics, to Boulez and especially the Third Sonata.

Johnson is a virtuoso pianist (a recent recording of Messiaen's Harawi attests to that), and the Sonata reflects his perform- ing abilities. John Ogden's recording of the Sonata is to be released shortly.

RICHARD SWIFT University of California at Davis

Gilbert Amy: Trajectoires pour Violon et Orchestre. [6 hns.; 4 trmpts.; 3 trmbs.; 1 bass trmb.; 1 tuba; 2 hrps.; perc.; str.; timp.; solo vln.] Paris: Heu- gel, 1969. [Score, 63 p., $9.75]

Gilbert Amy's Trajectoires is a concerto in one movement for violin and orchestra without woodwinds. The autograph score is reduced in size to virtual illegibility, at least so far as the actual notes are con- cerned, but the general dynamic and tex- tural directions (i.e. the "trajectories" of the title) are doubtless far more impor- tant. One cannot help remarking that this

disciple of Boulez and inheritor of the Domaine Musicale resembles his master even in the matter of handwriting.

The music oscillates between long drawn-out, sustained passages and periods of intense activity, yet the latter often, paradoxically, seem the more static, espe- cially when the strings are divided into multiple parts and the variety of their rhythms is self-destructive. There is some exciting interplay between strings, brass, and percussion, with varying degrees of coordination, but the harps seem to have no real place in the structure, and, worse, the solo violin adds very little to the piece. The soloist's part might be summed up by one of the directions: "Violent, quasi improvise"; its repertory of acrobatics, which must be most unrewarding to play, gives the violin an almost unrelentingly frenetic character. Nevertheless, there are some good things in the work, such as the ppp interlude for twenty-three drums at #19, and the intrusion of a moment of early Webernian calm at #29.

Paul Arma: Concerto pour quatour A cordes. Paris: Editions Musicales Transatlantiques; U. S. A.: Theodore Presser, Bryn Mawr, Pa., 1969. [Mini- ature score, 48 p., no price given]

Paul Arma's Concerto for string quartet, composed in 1946/47, would seem to be a representative work by this prolific musi- cian (the score contains a list of over a hundred quite substantial compositions written between 1928 and 1968). It is not surprising that Arma is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, since we have a superabundance of Armas our- selves: competent craftsmen, whose ability to assume current dialects, and to say rather little in them at considerable length, would have been better appre- ciated in earlier and more normal times.

The present work is in three movements of which the first is slow, the second very fast, and the third of variable tempo with cadenzas (apart from which there is little justification for the title). The idiom is that of Bart6k, some of whose favorite devices are used to varying degrees of excess: the laborious exposition of the alternate-tone scale in the first movement,

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