Duration: 8 minutes
Originally written for this piece examines the theme of untimely death. I began composing it the year following the sudden death of a childhood friend, who died in a building collapse, and a few years after my cousin passed away from suicide. Both deaths involved a fall, and the physicality of rising and falling motion worked its way into the architecture of the piece. Sections alternate between muddy darkness and warm light, an attempt to find balance between the despair and frustration of loss with the transcendent spiritual power of memory and what is left behind. I found solace in the writing of fellow Quaker William Penn, who also struggled with untimely death in the early days of Pennsylvania’s colony, writing in Fruits of Solitude (1682), “For death is no more than a turning over of us from time to eternity.” Although the quote reflects Christian belief, it resonated with me primarily as a physical truth. The matter in our bodies was manufactured by collapsing stars, and someday the dust of our bodies will return to that celestial state. For the briefest moment however, we experience time, and from that springs our experiences of love, story, anxiety, memory, and even music itself. Then, in a moment, we return to the eternal nature of unconscious matter.
This piece was originally written for chamber ensemble.