I Am Not Alone

Programme Notes

I wrote this piece in the spring of 2020, during a time when most of the world was staying at home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It wasn’t easy—like many of you, I missed going outside, seeing my friends, and doing all the fun things we usually do. But while we had to stay at home to keep everyone safe, one thing that helped me feel better was making music. Even though we couldn’t be together in person, technology let us play music with others online, and that made it all feel a bit more fun!

This composition is for violinists to play together, even if you’re not in the same room. While the piece was originally meant for people to play in their homes during the pandemic, now that things are better, you can perform it with your friends live, in person, as an ensemble! But if you’d like to recreate how it was made during the lockdown, you can practice and record your part, then imagine the other violins playing with you. By listening to a metronome and following a careful count, you can record your part and send it off, and if everyone does the same, you can combine all the parts later using video and audio editing.

This piece is a modern version of something called a passacaglia. In a passacaglia, there’s a repeating melody, and that’s what violins 4 and 5 do here—playing an 8-measure melody over and over again. Then, violins 1, 2, and 3 get to play their parts on top of it, making the music sound fuller and more exciting! Both the repeated melody and the fancy parts above it are what give this piece its rich, full sound.

I wrote this piece especially for all the violinists who stayed at home and played music during the pandemic. Remember, you weren’t alone—music brought us together, even when we couldn’t be in the same place.

– Frank Horvat

Many thanks to Dr. Mary-Elizabeth Brown for encouraging me to compose this piece and to Laura Nerenberg for her invaluable pedagogical insight.

Recommended Suzuki Violin Level for Playing Each Part:
Violin 1 – Book 6
Violin 2 – late Book 5
Violin 3 – Book 3 or 4
Violin 4 – early Book 2
Violin 5 – early Book 1 (after May Song)

I Am Not Alone photo collage photos by (from top left to bottom right): Stephan Kelle, Виктория Бородинова, Free-Photos from Pixabay, Igor Starkov from Unsplash, JC Aguirre, u_jup1hbno, Ferenc Keresi, Quinn Kampschroer from Pixabay, Nicole Dusseljee from Unsplash, Pexels from Pixabay, Stephanie Harvey from Unsplash, Виктория Бородинова (x2), Barbara Evening from Pixabay, Beazy, Brina Blum, Fred Kloet from Unsplash, joon yeol Baek, StockSnap, Geri Cleveland from Pixabay