Quiet Threnody
solo viola
(2016)

Duration: 5 minutes, 30 seconds

Premiered May 2016
Ammie Brod
Chicago IL

Composer’s Note

The stages of the grieving process (according to the Kübler-Ross model) are often enumerated in a specific order when they are discussed: 1) denial, 2) anger, 3) bargaining, 4) depression, and 5) acceptance. In reality, humans rarely experience grief in such a neat and organized way; we bounce back and forth around all of these feelings with little warning, and often, poor timing for such emotions to surface. I wanted to create a piece that felt like something to play. I wanted there to be an inconsistency of emotion, of feeling like one gesture was spiraling out from stability to insecurity, then to have a moment of peace before losing it all over again. The piece follows an overarching structure of obscurity to clarity, working towards a lucid, melodic line from a tangled set of tonally murky but gesturally charged fragments. It is my hope that the performer will pull the listener through this set of visceral and emotional processing of sound as a representation of one of the most irrational and universal experiences available to humans; grief.

This piece was written as part of Project Incubator at the University of Chicago.

To listen to a recording and learn more about the project and my collaboration with Ammie,click here.