James Ricci
Lamentation
Duration: 6'
Solos:
violin
Lamentation
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Work introduction
Lamentation – composed in 2014 – is a solo work for violin. It begins with a tonal sounding expression of general sorrow, mourning, and regret – not related to any particular event but perhaps in regard to a collective acknowledgement of loss in a changing world. However, over the course of five and a half minutes of its musical monologue, the rhetoric becomes increasingly virtuosic, agitated, and angry. It is as if its’ initial state of melancholy transforms into a different frame of mind – one of dissonant outbursts and protests. Lamentation is a work of solitary introspection and self-analysis. It also served as a compositional study for ideas that later found fruition in Ricci’s Concerto for Violin and Chamber Orchestra (2016).