Andrew Violette

Andrew Violette (December 6, 1953 - April 16, 2021) was an American composer, pianist, organist, and synthesizer player.
== Biography ==
Andrew Violette was born in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated in 1971 from the High School of Music & Art, and in 1975 he graduated from Juilliard School with B.M and M.M. degrees, studying composition with Roger Sessions and Elliott Carter, counterpoint with Otto Luening, and ear training with Reneé Longy. He participated in masterclasses, including one with Pierre Boulez. During his time at Juilliard he also performed as a pianist, premiering SUN, by Tod Machover. Violette was the recipient of the Lado Prize in Composition in 1972. He was awarded a Juilliard teaching fellowship in the 1974-1975 school year.
In 1975-1976, Violette began concurrent assignments as Organist and Music Director at the Lutheran Church of Our Savior's Atonement and Music Director of the Cornerstone Center concert series, both in upper Manhattan. These responsibilities continued until 1988. During this same period (1975-1988), he was active as a solo recitalist, accompanist, and recording artist in his own compositions and in the music of others, including appearances on eight vinyl LP records released on the Opus One label, and concerts at Weill Recital Hall, Fordham University and Sarah Lawrence College, among other venues.
Several of Mr. Violette's compositions were choreographed and performed by a number of dance troupes, including Battery Dance Company, the Paul Sanasardo Dance Company, and at the Merce Cunningham Studio. Violette was Music Director of Battery Dance Company, Jonathan Hollander, choreographer; Music Director of Paul Sanasardo Dance Company; and, Music Director of Peggy Florin Dancers. He accompanied dance classes for Merce Cunningham, Janet Panetta, Robert Blankshine and Nenette Charisse.
Violette also served as the accompanist for the Metropolitan Greek Chorale.
Mr. Violette was the recipient of seven Meet The Composer grants between 1977 and 1987, and was a MacDowell (artists' residency and workshop) Fellow in 1983 and 1984.
Between 1978 and 1992, Mr. Violette was several times the featured composer and pianist on Concert Grande, a radio program that aired on WFUV.
In 1988, Andrew Violette entered St. Mary's Monastery, Petersham, MA, to become ordained as a Benedictine monk. He became known as Brother Augustine Violette and was clothed as a novice in 1990. In 1994, Violette left St. Mary's Monastery to study to become a priest at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, NY.
In 1996, Violette left the seminary and resumed his professional career as a composer and performing musician. He took the post of Organist and Music Director at St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church, Brooklyn, NY, a position he held through 2019. At St. Augustine, he founded the St. Augustine Schola Cantorum, a mixed chorus wherein parishioners sing Gregorian chant a capella, traditional hymns and polyphony in four part harmony. In addition to his church duties, Violette focused on performing and recording his own music for his YouTube channel, and on the Composers Recordings, Inc., Innova Recordings, New Focus Recordings, and Composers Concordance Records labels. He appeared in concert at Merkin Hall, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and Bard College, among other venues.
A number of Violette's recordings and concerts included detailed program notes. 
In 2004, Andrew Violette was a guest on the Kalvos & Damian radio show, discussing his life and music.
Violette is thanked on the dedication page of Janice Weber's 2012 novel, Swing Set.
During the last ten years of his life, in addition to continuing to compose and record, Violette revised and edited a majority of his compositions. Among his final works are four symphonies, St. Mark Passion, and Pentecost (a setting of the gospel of John 20: 1-29).
Most of Violette's compositions, along with his performances of music by other composers, can be heard on his YouTube channel, SpecialEditions999. A large selection of Violette's scores can be found on International Music Score Library Project.
== The Music ==
Andrew Violette composed a wide variety of sacred and secular compositions, over ninety in number, some lasting under a minute, others taking over 3 hours to perform. His earliest surviving compositions date from 1969 and 1970. These compositions use extended tonality (e.g., Fugue in B minor, Fantasy), modal writing (Pistis Sophias), and twelve-tone compositional techniques (e.g., Fugamericana, 3 Little Pieces). In the 1970s, Violette composed works in twelve-tone idioms, culminating in the piano sonata cycle comprising sonatas 1, 2 and 3 (1978-1979), one a sonata in classical form, the second, a contemporary sonata in minimalist style, and the third, a sonata in the romantic vein. Piano Sonata 3 in particular is notable for being the first instance of Violette's forays into large scale form. The sonata has 14 sections and is played as one movement lasting about 70 minutes. Material from Polonaise-Fantaisie (Chopin)|Chopin's Polonaise-Fantasy runs through the whole piece.
Violette's compositions written in the 1980s are based on a tritonal modal system of the composer's own devising, and on the whole tend to be longer than his earlier compositions. Organbook, composed in 1981, employs the modes in a series of progressively more complex contrapuntal forms. Harmonizations, composed in 1982 and subtitled by the composer as "Another Look at 101 Beloved Lutheran Chorales", codifies by example how these modes can be used to produce four-part settings of hymn melodies. 
Violette's compositions from the mid-1990s onward continued his exploration of new formal structures. Compositional techniques became more eclectic and interwoven. Triadic sounds became more prominent. There was a growing preoccupation with continuous melody; that is, a sustained melodic line that can be traced (or sung) throughout a composition’s duration. Violette’s most extended compositions date from this period. These include: Mass, String Quartet 7, Piano Sonata 7, Organ Sonata, St. Mark Passion, Sonata for unaccompanied Violin, and Symphony #4.
Rave (composed 2001-2005) consists of 22 sections played without interruption. Piano Sonata 7, composed in 2001, lasts about three hours and has 26 parts, also played without pause. These works contain the first instances of "colorfield", a musical form pioneered by Mr. Violette and influenced by the New York City Color Field painters. The “color” in this context is composed of sets of pitches that change gradually over an extended period of time. Each demarcation (i.e., section) within a colorfield is sometimes referred to as a “panel”. Rave also contains an example of Violette’s “performance” form, which is taken up again in his Six Performances, composed in 2002, wherein six distinct compositions are performed simultaneously, though not necessarily precisely together.
Piano Sonata 7 was chosen by Richard Dyer, former music critic of the The Boston Globe|Boston Globe, as one of the best CDs of 2003.
Violette said of his longer works: “Why is the music so long? ...It's long because music exists not only in sound but in time and only through time can character change. In my non-vocal writing it's the themes which change. In my vocal writing the character of both the piano and the vocal part change -- and the change is never achieved without a struggle.”
Violette said of his work as a composer: “I seek to record in sound ‘pure memory’ (i.e., ‘all the events of our daily life’). Like Proust, I see duration as composed of qualitative, not quantitative, differentiations.”
Of his music's evolution, the composer wrote: During my "modal period" I composed not by using major and minor chords or a twelve tone row but by using a series of modes based not on the octave but on the tritone. I "invented" six tritone modes all of which were combinatorial at the tri-tone (as Milton Babbitt would say) or were of limited transposition (as Messiaen would say). This means that if you transpose all the notes of one particular mode up, say a tritone, you would get the same notes as the untransposed mode but in a different order. For instance, my C-major-major tritone mode (so named because it's composed of the juxtaposition of two major chords), the notes of which are C-Db-E-F#-G-A#, transposed up a tritone would be F#-G-A#-C-Db-E: the same notes! Because of this neat characteristic of the modes I was able to employ both Milton Babbitt's and Messiaen's compositional techniques- as well as all the traditional and contemporary techniques 1 ordinarily had at my disposal. Of course, in the music you'll hear references to other composers, from Verdi to Bartok, Strauss, Britten, my teachers (Carter and Sessions) and from jazz to punk rock-- all grist to the compositional mill. Every technique is used by my personality to entertain and thrill! Ten years later, I had exhausted the possibilities of modal writing. I wanted to investigate other compositional horizons.
I spent many years in a monastery. I was a contemplative monk. I didn't have a chance to go to concerts but by 1996 I was out in the world again and learned that many composers were writing in a "new tonal style." The New York Times was writing about the "emergence of tonality." I eagerly awaited this new era of harmony but alas! it never came. Instead, what I heard was the same harmonic progressions dating from tbe turn of the 20th century but dressed up in more contemporary clothes. This was fine for the others but if I were to "turn tonal" it would have to be a tonality in which the tonal relations themselves were completely new--but how to do this?
What I did was a very unstylish, dumb thing: I went back to the twelve tone writing of my student days (and I had just
learned that atonal music was dead!)--but this time, instead of using a series of single pitches, I would use a series of notes, chords, whatever. For instance, suppose you were to use the series C-F#-Eb-etc. The first sound could be the pitch C, the second sound might be an F# major chord and the third sound Eb minor. Sure, there would be a traditional tonal relationship between F# major and Eb minor and some sort of a relationship with the first note but such traditional harmonic relationships would be beside the point and contained within the abiding row.
I call this non-functional tonality "coloristic" because the chords relate to one another not in terms of going to a cadence but as colors--much like the pitches of a twelve tone set. Now I could write aurally beautiful music to express the fullness of my heart and yet it would be technically disciplined.}}
Of the influences on his music, the composer wrote: I owe a great debt to certain visual artists and a few composers. Jackson Pollock once said that a person looking at his work should look passively and try to receive what the painting has to offer. I hope that the listener...would relax and let the music overtake him.
I want the listener to be engulfed by unfolding time. I want the listener to experience the work not from the outside but to step into the work like a big painting. To me, this makes the long piece "intimate and human" as Mark Rothko would say.
As for composers, it was Morton Feldman who taught me not to be afraid of silence. Not only the quality but the placement of silence is important. Within a large time span silence can be meditative and deep. One can write very slow and very fast music, very soft and very loud music, very short and very long music and it all balances out.
From Bach I learned the hidden charms of numbers. In his work, as in mine, Fibonacci series, primes, matrices and permutations abound. Not only this but also the symbolic numbers of Christianity play a defining role: 3 (Trinity), 5 (wounds of Christ), 12 (apostles), 13 (Judas), 7 (the perfection of the days) etc. Yet these things, in Bach as in my own writing, are hidden. It isn't necessary to know that sonata two is based on 17, the universal arbitrary constant or that there are 144 measures in section x to enjoy the music. Yet the numbers are there in secret for the glory of God.
From Roger Sessions I learned the integrity of the sustained melodic line and from Elliott Carter of the importance of rhythm. Milton Babbitt and John Cage stretched my technical skills. From Richard Wagner I learned to dare.
Lastly, it was Messiaen who taught me that the tonality/atonality polarity, which everyone has been fighting about for years, is a false opposition. The defining harmonic question is not "what is the tonality of this piece?" but "is there resonance here or no resonance?" I use a great palette of harmonic techniques: modality, free-atonality, nonfunctional tonality, diatonicism, bi-tonality, strict combinatorial serialism, functional tonality, etc. Yet, they all share one thing in common: the music sounds.}}
From the performer's perspective, Violette's music makes unusual demands in terms of endurance, agility, athleticism, and pattern recognition. Of his playing, John Rockwell of The New York Times wrote that Violette “played this overtly virtuosic music with fierce authority.”
== Writings ==
From 2010 to 2018, Violette reviewed CD new releases for New Music Connoisseur.
== List of Compositions ==
* A Un Poeta Menor De La Antologia song cycle (baritone, piano)
* American Song Set (soprano, baritone, piano)
* American Songs (oboe, clarinet, bassoon)
* Amor dammi quel fazzolettino (piano duet)
* Black Riders (tenor, piano)
* Black Tea (soprano, harp, contrabass, percussion)
* Cello Sonata (cello & piano)
* Chaconne (violin, marimba, chimes)
* Choral Music (SATB)
* Chorales for Organ
* Clarinet Sonata (clarinet & piano)
* Cuerpo de Mujer song cycle (tenor, piano)
* Dance (organ or synthesizer)
* Danny Boy (tenor, piano)
* The Death of the Hired Man (soprano, piano)
* Early in the Morning (The Adulterous Woman) (baritone, piano)
* Emily Dickinson's Book of the Dead (soprano, piano)
* Fantasy (piano solo)
* 5 Finger Pieces (piano solo)
* Flute Sonata (solo flute)
* Fugamericana (piano solo)
* Fugue in B minor (piano solo)
* Guitar Sonata (solo guitar)
* Harmonizations (keyboard)
* In Memoriam (2 trumpets, 2 horns, marimba)
* Intermezzo (piano solo)
* Invention for Two Violins
* Last Dance (two pianos)
* Libera Me (organ)
* Little Lullabye (solo guitar)
* 3 Little Pieces (piano solo)
* Love Alone (high voice, piano)
* The Love Duet (soprano, tenor, piano)
* Madrigals (soprano, alto, tenor, bass, cello, piano)
* Mass (SAATB a cappella)
* Not But They Die (baritone, piano)
* On Boxing (tenor, piano)
* Organ Sonata (Sonata for the Creation of the World)
* Organbook
* Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi secundum Marcum (St. Mark Passion) (SAATB, violin, cello, piano)
* Pastorale (bass trombone & organ)
* Pentecost (John Resurrection) (SATB, 2 flutes, oboe, clarinet Bb/bass clarinet, synthesizer, string quartet)
* Piano Piece 1
* Piano Piece 2
* Piano Quintet (piano, 2 violins, viola, cello)
* Piano Sonata 1
* Piano Sonata 2
* Piano Sonata 3
* Piano Sonata 4
* Piano Sonata 5
* Piano Sonata 6
* Piano Sonata 7
* Piano Trio (violin, cello, piano)
* 2 Pieces in F major (piano solo)
* Pistis Sophias (solo voice)
* Poem (piano solo)
* Presto for Mechanical Keyboard
* Quintet for Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Piano
* Rave (electric violin, violin, keyboards)
* Ringing Changes (piano solo)
* Saxophone Quartet (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone)
* Sextet (2 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos)
* Short/Fast (two pianos)
* Six Performances (Clarinet, Flute, Horn, Piano, Synthesizer, Cello, Violin)
* Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin
* Sonata for Two Pianos
* Sonatina for Harp and Piano
* Sonatinas (piano solo)
* Songs and Dances (solo cello)
* 2 Spanish Arias (soprano, baritone, piano)
* String Quartet 0
* String Quartet 1
* String Quartet 2
* String Quartet 3
* String Quartet 4
* String Quartet 5 
* String Quartet 6
* String Quartet 7
* String Trio (violin, viola, cello)
* Symphony 1
* Symphony 2
* Symphony 3
* Symphony 4
* Trio for Clarinet, Bassoon and Piano
* Trio for Horn, Bass Trombone and Piano
* Two Songs (mezzo soprano, piano)
* Very fine is my valentine (soprano, piano)
* Viola Quintet (2 violins, 2 violas, cello)
* Violin Sonata (violin & piano)
* Waltz (cello & piano)
* Worldes Blis (horn in F, soprano trumpet, 2 trumpets in B♭, 2 trombones, timpani)
== Discography ==
* Thomas, Death of Yukio Mishima, Andrew Violette, electric organ; Widdoes, From a Time of Snow, Andrew Violette, piano. OPUS ONE NUMBER 28
* Pepe, Rue de La Tombe Issoire; Trogan, Piano Sonata, Andrew Violette, piano. OPUS ONE NUMBER 32
* Thomas, An Wasserflüssen Babylon, Andrew Thomas and Andrew Violette, duo pianists. OPUS ONE NUMBER 34
* Violette, Sonata for Two Pianos (1976), Andrew Thomas and Andrew Violette, duo pianists. OPUS ONE NUMBER 36
* Creshevsky, Chaconne, Andrew Violette, piano. OPUS ONE NUMBER 50
* Violette, amor dammi quel fazzolettino, Andrew Thomas and Andrew Violette, piano duet. OPUS ONE NUMBER 52
* Violette, Black Tea (1976), Judith Bettina, soprano; Joseph Tamosaitis, contrabass; Alyssa Hess, harp; Andrew Violette (percussion). Violette, Piano Piece Two (1974), Andrew Violette, piano. OPUS ONE NUMBER 53
* Schubel, B♮/Miraplex/Everybody's Favourite Rag, Andrew Violette, piano. OPUS ONE CD 151
* Violette, Sonatina 2/Sonatina 5; Thomson, Edges: A Portrait of Robert Indiana, Andrew Violette, piano. composers collaborative: solo flights, New World Records/CRI NWCR864
* Trogan, Four Bagatelles/Piano Sonata No. 2, Andrew Violette, piano. Patrice Editions PECD 002
* Trogan, Diptych/Piano Fantasy, Andrew Violette, piano. Patrice Editions PECD 001
* Trogan, Five Pieces for Piano/Piano Sonata No. 3/Elegy for Piano, Andrew Violette, piano. Patrice Editions PECD 005
* Bach, The Bach Project, Volume 1, Andrew Violette, piano. CD BABY UPC 634479861253
* Bach, The Bach Project, Volume 2, Andrew Violette, piano. CD BABY UPC 634479861260
* Bach, The Bach Project, Volume 3, Andrew Violette, piano. CD BABY UPC 198003808911
* Violette, Sonata for the Creation of the World, Andrew Violette, organ. Composers Concordance Records COMCON6
* Violette, Piano Sonatas, Volume 1, Andrew Violette, piano. Innova #587
* Violette, Piano Sonatas, Volume 2, Andrew Violette, piano. Innova #641
* Violette, The Death of the Hired Man, Sherry Zannoth, soprano; Brad Cresswell, tenor; Andrew Violette, piano. Innova #608
* Violette, Rave, Gregor Kitzis, electric violin; Curtis Macomber, violin; Andrew Violette, keyboards. Innova #674
* Violette, Sonata for Unaccompanied Violin, Robert Uchida, violin. Innova #711
* Violette, UltraViolette, Elizabeth Farnum, soprano; Ensemble Pi; Janice Weber, piano; John Rojak, bass trombone; Kaitlin Mahoney, horn; Maggie Lauer, flute; Raemond Martin, baritone; Sherry Zanoth, soprano; Andrew Violette, piano. Innova #757
* Violette, Songs and Dances, Ben Capps, cello. Innova #780
* Violette, Sonata for Guitar, Daniel Lippel, guitar. New Focus Recordings fcr148
* Violette, Sonatas for Cello and Clarinet, Ben Capps, cello; Moran Katz, clarinet; Andrew Violette, piano. Innova #832
== Selected Performances ==
*Excerpts from Harmonizations, Mass, Bard Composers Forum, Bard Conservatory of Music, 2014, Andrew Violette (Lecture/Performance)
* Six Performances, American Composers Alliance, 2003, Andrew Violette and Musicians
* Solo Concert: Piano Sonata 7, Merkin Hall 2002, Andrew Violette, pianist
* Body of Woman; Song Set; Piano Sonata 6; Crash, Merkin Hall, 2001, Andrew Violette and Musicians 
* Quare; Songs for a Dead Hero, Merkin Hall, 2001, Andrew Violette and Musicians
* Piano Sonata 1, CAMI Hall, 2001, Friends and Enemies of New Music, Andrew Violette, pianist
* Solo Concert: Music to Crash; Blues; Sonatinas 1-4, Composers Collaborative, HERE, 2000, Andrew Violette, pianist
* String Quartet 2; String Quartet 3; Madrigals; Four Songs, Piano music, Weill Hall, 1987, Andrew Violette and Musicians
* String Quartet 1; Piano Sonata 6; Piano Sonata 4; Trio, Weill Hall, 1986, Andrew Violette and Musicians
* Solo Concert: Piano Sonata 3; Piano Sonata 5, Weill Hall, 1985, Andrew Violette, pianist
* Piano Sonata 5, Concert Grande (WFUV-FM, Fordham University), 1985, Andrew Violette, pianist
* Chaconne, Pace University, 1985, Roger Zahab, violin; William Moersch, marimba
* Last Dance, University of the District of Columbia, Battery Dance Company, 1984, Andrew Thomas & Andrew Violette, pianos
* Chaconne, Pace University: Downtown Dance Festival, 1984, Andrew Violette and Musicians 
* American Songs, Cornerstone Concert, 1984, Burgundy Trio
* Pastorale, Cornerstone Concert, 1984, Andrew Violette (organ) and Musicians
* Quintet, Brooklyn Music School, 1983, Odyssey Chamber Players, Andrew Violette, pianist
* Solo Concert: Harmonizations, Cornerstone Concert, 1983, Andrew Violette, pianist
* Piano Sonata 4, The Space at City Center, Paul Sanasardo Dance Company, 1983, Andrew Violette, pianist
* Flute Sonata, Lincoln Center, 1983, John Ranck, flute
* Worldes Blis, Pace University Theatre, 1983, Bargemusic
* Dance, Marymount Theatre, 1982, Andrew Violette, organist
* Organbook, Cornerstone Concert, 1982, Andrew Violette, organist
* Three Pieces in F, Merce Cunningham Studio, 1982, Andrew Violette, pianist
* "The Abiding Void" (Piano Sonata 4), Paul Sanasardo Dance, New York University Theater, City Center, 1982, Andrew Violette, pianist
* Sonata 2 for Two Pianos (Last Dance), Joy of Movement Dance Umbrella, 1982, Andrew Thomas & Andrew Violette
* A Cardinal Number (Dance), Peggy Florin (member Dance Theater Workshop), Marymount Manhattan Theatre, 1982, Andrew Violette, electric organ
* Piano Sonata 2, Emanu-el Midtown Y Dance Series, Theater of the Open Eye, 1981, Andrew Violette, pianist
* Intermezzo, Ethical Culture Society, 1981, Andrew Violette, pianist
* Last Dance, Battery Dance Company, 1979, Jed Distler & Andrew Violette, pianos
* Piano Sonata 1; Piano Sonata 2; Piano Sonata 3, Concert Grande (WFUV-FM, Fordham University), 1979, Andrew Violette, pianist
* Black Tea, Group for Contemporary Music, Manhattan School of Music, 1978, Andrew Violette and Musicians
* Piano Sonata 1; Piano Sonata 2; Piano Sonata 3, Fordham University, 1978, Andrew Violette, pianist
* Amor Dammi Quel Fazzolettino; Sonata 1 for Two Pianos; Short/Fast, Emerson Theatre, 1978, Andrew Thomas & Andrew Violette, duo pianists
* Fugamericana; Piano Piece Two; Intermezzo, Concert Grande (WFUV-FM, Fordham University), 1977, Andrew Violette, pianist
* Piano Piece One, Boulez master class, Juilliard Theatre 1974, Andrew Violette, pianist
* In Memoriam; Fugue in Bm; Sonatina for Harp & Piano, Paul Hall, Juilliard, 1972, Andrew Violette and Musicians
Category:1953 births
Category:2021 deaths
Category:American composers
Category:American pianists
Category:People from Brooklyn