Soliloquy, Violin (1998)
ANDREW IMBRIE
Born 6 April 1921, New York City.
Died 5 December 2007, Berkeley, CA.
Soliloquy, for unaccompanied violin, was commissioned by Janet Packer, and was completed 2 April 1998. The work begins with a broad melody which little by little gathers momentum, and then returns to its opening motive before disappearing into a high space. It is succeeded by a lighter passage, which eventually continues to increase in energy and speed until a preliminary climax is reached. As the line descends it broadens out to a re-statement of the original melody. Here double-stops appear for the first time. Next comes an allegretto section in more irregular meter, where patterns of various durations alternate with one another, and with momentary silences, and contrasts in texture are provided by momentary pizzicato, tremolo, and sul ponticello effects. This in turn leads to an even faster passage involving rapid and irregular rhythmic patterns, which finally coalesce into more continuous passage-work, alternating with double-stops jumping between high and low registers. Finally, everything broadens out and leads to a recapitulation of the original melody, an octave higher and greatly extended, with no double-stops occurring until the very last few measures, as the final cadence approaches.
Andrew Imbrie
Andrew Imbrie was born in New York in 1921 and grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. He began piano lessons at the age of four, studying with Ann Abajian and later with Pauline and Leo Ornstein. He studied composition with Roger Sessions, first at Princeton, and, after serving in World War II, at Berkeley, where he received an M.A. in 1947. After a residence at the American Academy in Rome from 1947 to 1949, he returned to Berkeley as a faculty member. After his retirement in 1991, Mr. Imbrie held visiting professorships at the University of Alabama, New York University, the University of Chicago, Northwestern and Harvard Universities. His compositions include five string quartets and other chamber music, three symphonies, choral works, several concertos, solo works for instruments and voice, and the opera Angle of Repose, which was performed by the San Francisco Opera in 1976. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and served on the board of directors of the Koussevitzky Foundation.
