by Layne Anspach
Trevor Zavac’s “Fringe” for horn, violin, and piano (2022) will be the focus of this month’s Chamber Music Corner. Trevor Zavac (b. 2000) is a composer and hornist. He received a BM from Indiana University and is currently pursuing his MM in Composition at the University of Southern California. Zavac was the 2024 ASCAP Morton Gould Award winner, and his works have been performed by the Indianapolis Ballet, the Indianapolis Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, and other ensembles.
“Fringe” was premiered during the 2022 Brevard Music Center Summer Institute. Zavac included the following program notes for the work:
“Fringe” (2022), for horn trio, is inspired by the idea of pulling at a loose thread on a piece of woven fabric. The music, like fabric, is tightly woven and very compact, but with time, it unravels—being slowly disassembled as the pattern is pulled apart, slipping and snagging on the way, until it dissipates entirely.
Receiving Honorable Mention in the International Horn Society’s 2022 Composition Competition, “Fringe” was subsequently performed at the 2023 International Horn Symposium in Montréal.
The work is in a single movement marked Allegro. The three players begin with short staccato hits using various timbres or techniques: the violin starts pizzicato and the horn plays stopped. As the section progresses, each member has slightly longer motivic elements stacked together. A descending sixteenth-note passage in the violin tumbles into the next section in which we hear continuous lines from all members, and this builds to heavy accents in the violin and horn.
As the music grows to a collective downbeat, the texture changes dramatically and an ostinato is heard in the left hand of the piano. Once the right hand joins, the horn plays a melodic line which the violin subsequently assumes. The ostinato stops leading to more fragmentation, as Zavac puts it, unravelling. The staccato prevalent at the outset of the work disappears, giving way to longer and longer phrases. A new ostinato emerges in the piano, more soothing than the first. This, along with the continued elongation of lines in the violin and horn, brings the work to a measured conclusion.
The reference recording is from a live performance in Auer Hall at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. The hornist is Andre Richter.
