BRATTLEBORO — This is a story about a piece of music and the connections among those it has touched.
It is a story about music that, when first conceived, used a form and shape previously unknown.
This story is about the intersection of art, music, computers, wine, Vermont, Chicago, and Pennsylvania.
It is about Charles Dodge, the visionary pioneer of computer-generated music, and his deeply felt sorrow at the loss of a friend.
It is about Baird Dodge, Charles's son, who majored in chemistry in college, not expecting to become a professional classical violinist in one of the most renowned orchestras in the country.
It is about a music director with vision, passion, and wide connections.
It is a story about how a piece of music has brought composer, violist, musical director, a live orchestra, and listeners into the same space for a short but profoundly moving time.
This is a story about the nexus where community and individual passion meet.
The story starts in New York City in the early 1960s.
Charles Dodge is a name among both contemporary composers and computer scientists. He pioneered the techniques of computer synthesis of music while teaching at City College in New York City. His more than 40-year career in the classroom finished up at Dartmouth, where he taught electronic music composition for 18 years.
Although the textbook he wrote is still the definitive work on computer synthesis, he is a self-effacing, grateful, kind man who just happens to be world famous. Neighbors would know him as the owner of Putney Winery, where local fruits are transmuted into wine in massive stainless steel tanks in a room within the Basketville Store on Route 5 in Putney.
As Dodge developed techniques for writing music with synthesized sound, he expanded the sonic palette for composers. As a winemaker, he uses local fruits to expand the palette of the wine tasting public. He has brought equal passion and attention to his musical compositions and to his wine.
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Like Dodge's life story, the story of “Elegy for Viola,” which will be performed by the Windham Orchestra this weekend, is also one of creation and recreation.
Back in the early 1990s when Hugh Keelan was the music director of the Northeast Pennsylvania Philharmonic, he gave a job to a young violinist fresh out of graduate school. That young man, Baird Dodge, had played the second performance of his father's composition, “Elegy for Viola” while still in college.
The piece was written in memory of Milton Friedman who was a close personal friend, mentor, and inspiration to Charles Dodge.
In 2006, Baird Dodge was appointed principal second violinist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 2015, he is here in Vermont to play his father's composition as orchestrated by Keelan, now music director of the Windham Orchestra.
The piece itself is a fascinating, exquisitely imagined song. “Elegy for Viola” was originally written for live viola and computer generated, taped sounds. The taped music is neither an accompaniment to the solo viola, nor its own separate song. The live viola plays with and among the ethereal sounding notes captured on tape, and as the piece develops, the viola's part weaves in and out into a final cadenza of aching beauty.
Keelan took the taped music and matched its tones to live instruments, creating a score from Charles Dodge's work. The result is a moving, deeply touching experience for both the ensemble and the soloist.
The tune itself is poignant, yearning, exquisitely tonal in quality. The viola floats among the tones of the orchestra's part as a partner in the overall dance, weaving and gliding, sidestepping and circling, fugue-like and subtly building a partnership that opens up space for the listener to contemplate, to feel, to perhaps weep remembering a dead love, or to simply experience emotion.
This is where the music intersects with life. This is the chance for musicians and listeners to engage with each other in experiencing a work of art offered with love and a rare openness.