Edith Borroff

Flute and Piano

IONS is Borroff’s answer to the flute sonata: a traditional three movements (here titled Octave, Sestet, and Couplet) are subdivided into the fourteen lines of the literary Petrarchan sonnet form. Even though IONS is, by far, the most experimental of Borroff’s sonatas, it adheres to the general idea of tonality she expressed in her second sonata for cello and piano:

“The work is composed in a technique I call diatonic atonality, a technique that allows a great deal of freedom. In it the fabric eschews obeisance to a tonal center, but each movement is defined in part by brief concentrations upon certain scale materials and by cadences pulling to particular tones (though not in the traditional sense)."

In IONS, this is taken to a personal extreme for Borroff: each of the fourteen sections switches between various centers (tonal, ostinato, scalar, etc.) and musical and notational styles (Italian Baroque, graphic American Modernism, Russian 20th Century, etc.). Despite the visual differences between the sections, they can be smoothly connected when played continuously.