OUROBOROS (2023) for solo viola

Instrumentation: solo viola

Duration: ~7 minutes

Performance/Recording History:

• Premiered by Will Sotiriou, viola on April 3, 2023 at the Viola Premieres 2023: Rodland Viola Studio Collaborates with Juilliard Composition Students event in Paul Hall at The Juilliard School in New York City, NY.

Program Notes:

The ouroboros is an ancient symbol which depicts a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. It is often interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal and a metaphor for infinity.

How does this archaic idea relate to a seven-minute piece for solo viola? This composition effectively consumes itself, just as the ouroboros devours its own body. Throughout the piece, three contrasting sections are stated and then continually reappear, each time in a shorter, compressed form as the piece eats itself alive. The cycle of the alternating sections repeats itself over and over again, growing more frantic and desperate, seemingly interminable. Finally, the piece knocks itself into eternity, and we are left with nothing more than a fragment of what began the cycle in the first place. The journey we have just embarked on has taken us nowhere but the beginning.