Milton Babbitt's Melismata (1982) for solo violin is in many ways an exercise in length. At some twenty minutes, the piece itself is quite long, and its melodic lines are exceedingly broad. Unlike many of Babbitt's other works for solo instrument—the famous My Ends are My Beginnings (1978) for solo clarinet, for example, or None but the Lonely Flute (1991)—the melodic spans of Melismata are not limited by the performer's breath capacity, and the composer freely exploits this new potential. Much of the violin writing is reminiscent of Renaissance vocal writing where a series of pitches sung to a single syllable are said to constitute a "melisma," perhaps hinting at a motivation for the work's title. Frequent mixing of long and short rhythmic values, as well as constant flux of the register in which the violin plays, lead to the impression that several levels of musical activity are simultaneously present yet unified into a singular gesture.

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