jwilzewske: Imbrie: Social Diversity-Conscious Composer/Historian/Iconoclast

P olitical myths are narratives that coagulate and reproduce significance [for and in a social group]. They consist of the work on a common narrative by which the members of a social group or society represent or posit their experiences and deeds. As such, they are an important part of what can be called the ‘social imaginary’... [Political myths] are positional, in that they are told from the standpoint of the present. In other words, if the historian can be defined as a ‘turned-back prophet’, in what ways does he or she differ from an ideal/typical myth-maker? Or, to put it another way, in what ways do political myths and historical writings respectively contribute to present identities, or in what ways are they the result of them?”
— Chiara Bottici, p. 201.

Andrew Imbrie (06-APR-1921 – 05-DEC-2007) had a wry sense of humor, one that hails from an era that seems now long-gone. Exhibit “A”: Imbrie’s ‘Three Against Christmas,’ an opera in four scenes (libretto by Richard Wincor, available through Edition C.F.Peters) about Christmas being banned and restored——premiered in Berkeley in 1964. In the current political climate in the U.S. today, it’s hard to imagine such a thing being written—even in jest—and unthinkable that it could be performed in a public place. Imbrie’s last completed work, ‘Sextet for Six Friends’, was premiered by the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble in February this year. It, too, manifests iconoclasm at its social-activist best—revising the relationship between the performers and the audience, and challenging the audience members’ conceptions of themselves and their society.

Andrew Imbrie’s music was emblematic of a 60+ year quest for meaningful post-tonal idioms. His compositions honor the individual and social importance of emotion and integrity. He harnesses dissonance and motivic ‘passion’ in the service of narrative development, of dramatic exposition, and of harmonic relationships between the voices/parts; that is to say, he did not indulge in throw-down, dissonant gestures to uncertain ends.

It’s debatable whether Imbrie preferred harmonies that are non-triadic. But, if triadic harmonies were to be sanctioned in an Imbrie composition, then they’d better be ‘non-functional’ ones, or at least not ‘conventionality-subservient-functional’ ones!

His Requiem, for example, is terse, bitter, mercurial—defiant, even. But, rather than dwell upon poignant reflection and grief, the 32-minute, 6-movement work generates an unexpected epiphany. It propels us [performers; listeners] to an unbidden, inadvertent (re-)discovery of the divergence between views about what mortality means—divergent views of people of different ages, between successive generations of humans—decorated by the traditional Latin Requiem text and elegiac poetry by William Blake, George Herbert and John Donne.

M y music does not strive to be American like my nationality, nor Scottish like my ancestry. It is neither experimental nor conventional... Composing for me is a process of drawing out the consequences (as I perceive them) of an initial idea ... Once the idea has become specific enough, it begins to generate its own continuation ... The sense of the large structure becomes increasingly clear as the work progresses.”
— Andrew Imbrie.

The divergent views are not resolved, nor are they resolvable. In a thoroughly post-modern way, Imbrie shows the validity of each of the divergent perspectives and affirms each. There is no ideological ‘winner’; there is no ‘best’. Besides our inevitable losses and mortality, the inherent, irresolvable complexity in the human condition is the gaping truth that Imbrie reveals in this peculiar, deeply-moving Requiem. You wanted something nicey-nicey? Tough luck! Discover this!

A sking a composer to describe his own style is like asking a person ‘How do you walk? How do you talk? How do you breathe?’ ”
— Andrew Imbrie, Society of Composers interview, 2001.

Imbrie acknowledged his influences and composerly indebtedness to sounds and compositional methods used by predecessors. But he deeply mistrusted mathematical systems and 20th century formal models—12-tone/serialist ones and otherwise. He was, in other words, a brave and sturdy opponent of dogma and coercion and blinkered orthodoxy of all sorts.

Three Against Christmas, Andrew Imbrie, Berkeley, 1964

‘Three Against Christmas’ was, after all, a comic opera—a tragically prescient one, maybe, considering the course that things have taken lately, anticipating as it did the social and political trends that lay in the decades ahead.

Then and now, of course, no one has ‘banned’ Nativity plays. People are nominally still free to celebrate the coming holiday as they see fit—which may include going to church, celebrating it without any religious content, or completely ignoring it. The only significant change in recent years has been politicians’ and the media’s progressive audacity to pretend that they have ‘values’ (and implying that others do not have legitimacy or ‘values’) by spuriously defending something that isn’t under attack, and by disingenuously ascribing to their political opponents views that those opponents do not in fact hold—all of this done in a shameless attempt to arrogate more power to themselves, and to disenfranchise/suppress voices that are different from their own.

T here is a consistency of style, character, spirit — what is commonly called ‘voice’ — that identify the music as personally, individually his. At no point could it be identified with a ‘movement’, a ‘trend’, a ‘school’, an ‘-ism’.”
— Robert Commanday, Memorial remarks, A Composer Apart, SFCV.

Imbrie’s works include five string quartets, plus many chamber and choral works, as well as three symphonies. Each of these, in one way or another, propounds arguments in support of pluralism and explores the merits of cultural and perspectival diversity. By implication, Imbrie exhorted us to be honest, and to acknowledge that we are all of ‘mixed’ heritage—that we all desperately need to ‘belong’.

I n the Latin text, the Offertory is an actual prayer, not a poem about prayer as it is here. The choral and instrumental setting is intended to reflect its ritual quality, enhancing it by the alternation of male and female voices and by the ornamental use of tuned drums. Only in the middle, where the chorus prays that the dead be granted eternal life, does the music escape from this implied formality. ‘Death be Not Proud and Conclusion’ consists of three parts. The first is an extended, agitated orchestral introduction, which was needed in order to generate the energy for the setting of John Donne’s sonnet. Here, the chorus sings in English for the first time and sings only one melody in unison and octaves. This culminating expression of human faith in an ultimate victory over death is followed by a foreshortened setting of the concluding parts of the Latin Requiem, in which the soprano soloist, singing in Latin for the first time, participates by interjecting a ‘Benedictus’, reaching the highest notes of her range. After this, while the listener holds those high notes in memory, together with the preceding choral sounds, the music subsides quickly to its conclusion, recalling the opening of the work.”
— Andrew Imbrie.

T he overall concept of civic virtue too often contains a romantic reading of history that, we think, leads us astray. The assumption of a singular moral center in the past and the desire to resume it in the future promotes an ideology [that is] deficient on two counts. It is more intolerant toward those who feel harmed by the prevailing consensus, and it preempts the possibility that greater social unity might flow from value systems that are open to multiple sources of moral authority. To imagine a pristine time before the fall is to assume a harmonious time that never existed...”
— Tom de Luca, p.87.

We will miss Andrew Imbrie’s activism, his inclusiveness, his generosity and tolerance, his curiosity and enthusiasm for new ideas. We will miss his good sense of humor; his zeal for manufacturing equality, plurality, and justice where those were in short supply. We will miss his communitarian tendency to encourage all people to join and discover and celebrate their respective traditions and identities.

jwilzewske

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Imbrie: Social Diversity-Conscious Composer/Historian/Iconoclast

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