Aaron Jay Kernis originally composed his Partita for guitar as a student in 1981, but added a new second movement and revamped the first movement in 1995. Partita was a Baroque term for a collection of dance movements; although none of Kernis' movements are dances, all of them are cast in recognizable, if slightly modified, Baroque forms. The first movement, a Ciacona, plays its ground theme for a little while at the beginning but then seems to lose interest in it; for the remainder of the movement Kernis has the guitar suggest, rather than actually play, the ground. The ground itself is a gentle, walking major-mode theme. While pleasingly quiet and flowing, the Ciacona is nevertheless not very contrapuntal. Echo is the title of the second movement, which does feature echo effects, as phrases are played loudly and then repeated softly. The movement has an ABA form, with ornaments on the repeat of the first section just like a Baroque da capo aria. The third movement is a Passacaglia, and here Kernis adheres strictly to the form; the passacaglia theme, hushed and sad, never leaves the music. Contrapuntal tensions build up slowly over the duration of the piece, as in the best Baroque examples of this form, while the mood moves from sad to anguished. This movement ends suddenly, and the fourth movement begins without a break. This finale is a Toccata, a brilliant display work. Kernis has cast this movement in ABA form as well. A gravity-defying moto perpetuo begins it; there is not a single resting point during this first section for the guitarist. The second section revives the Baroque tradition of terraced dynamics, as the music moves between quiet descending scalar passages and heroic strumming with nary a crescendo or decrescendo. A splashy coda ends the work. Although Kernis borrows all of his forms here, the music never sounds anachronistic or uninteresting.



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