SCENES AND SOLILOQUIES for double bass and harp

Composer's Note:

In the early 1980’s, I wrote one concert of original chamber music per year for four years. Scenes and Soliloquies for Double Bass and Harp was written for Chamber Concert No. 2, which took place on May 18, 1982. The concert featured Cindy Baker, playing violin and harp, William Wanser, percussion, while I played piano and bass. The other works on the program were Invocation (1982) for piano and percussion and Midsummer Night for violin, marimba, and piano. Stylistically, the concert is transitional, with Invocation looking backward to my first chamber music concert and the other two pieces pointing forward to the third.

About a year or two earlier, I had written another work for bass and harp, Intermezzo (1981), but was having trouble finding a harpist to play it. (That work is now almost always done with piano.) I wanted to be kinder to the harpist, while taking advantage of Cindy’s multiple talents. I also wanted to explore further the harp with pizzicato bass. Scenes and Soliloquies grew from this exploration. It features a lyrical pizzicato solo by the bass to begin the work, a section for harp and arco bass, a harp cadenza, and a reprise of the pizzicato bass solo over the harp cadenza material to close the piece. The piece is lyrical and quite romantic.