Andrew Imbrie

Andrew Imbrie
Born	(1921-04-06)April 6, 1921
Died	December 5, 2007(2007-12-05) (aged 86)
Era	Contemporary

Andrew Welsh Imbrie (April 6, 1921 – December 5, 2007) was an American contemporary classical music composer and pianist.

Career[]

Imbrie was born in New York City and began his musical training as a pianist when he was 4.^[1] In 1937, he went to Paris to study composition briefly with Nadia Boulanger and piano with Robert Casadesus.^[1] He returned to the United States the next year to attend Princeton University where he studied with Roger Sessions, receiving his undergraduate degree in 1942.^[1] His senior thesis there, a string quartet, was recorded by the Juilliard Quartet. During World War II he served in the U.S. Army as a Japanese translator.^[1] Afterwards, he went to the University of California, Berkeley, where he received an M.A. in Music in 1947; there he continued to study with Sessions, who had taken a position at Berkeley.

Imbrie taught composition, theory, and analysis at Berkeley from 1949 until his retirement in 1991. In the summer of 1991 he was Composer-in-Residence at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts.

In addition to his principal teaching job at Berkeley, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Brandeis University, Northwestern University, New York University, the University of Alabama, and Harvard University, and had a regular teaching post at the San Francisco Conservatory.^[1]

He died at his home in Berkeley, California at the age of 86.^[2]

His notable students include Larry Austin, , Richard Festinger, Alden Jenks, Frank La Rocca, Neil Rolnick, Allen Shearer, Laura Schwendinger, Nils Frykdahl, , Hi Kyung Kim, Leslie Wildman and Carolyn Yarnell.^{[citation needed]}

Style[]

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Imbrie's style was influenced early by Béla Bartók,^{[citation needed]} and then by Roger Sessions, his teacher at both Princeton and Berkeley.^[3] Imbrie preferred harmony that was non-triadic,^[3] or if triadic, non-functional, and a tightly organized, often atonal, contrapuntal texture with attention to careful motivic development; he avoided the serial techniques that dominated art music composition after the Second World War.^{[citation needed]} Imbrie was also attentive to melodic line and shape to make a free atonal language accessible.

Selected compositions[]

Imbrie's body of work spans many genres. His chief works are:^[4]

• Three Against Christmas (1960 opera)
• Angle of Repose (1976 opera)
• Dandelion Wine (1961 for chamber ensemble)
• To a Traveler (1971 for chamber ensemble)
• Sextet for Six Friends (2007 for chamber ensemble)
• Drumtaps for chorus with orchestra (text by Whitman)
• Prometheus Bound for chorus with orchestra (text by Green after Aeschylus)
• Adam for chorus with orchestra (text from medieval and Civil War sources)
• Requiem (1984, chorus with orchestra)
• Three symphonies
• Eight concertos
• Songs for voice
• Sonatas for various instruments
• Chamber works for diverse instrumental ensembles
• Works for choral ensembles
• Five string quartets

Recordings[]

References[]

Sources[]

• Ann P. Basart, Martin Brody: "Andrew Imbrie", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed July 21, 2006) (subscription required)
• Kennedy, Michael (2006), The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 985 pages, ISBN 0-19-861459-4

External links[]

• Imbrie's San Francisco Conservatory Of Music faculty page
• Collage page about Andrew Imbrie and his music
• Art of the States: Andrew Imbrie three works by the composer
• Andrew Imbrie interview, April 26, 1986