Morning at the Window premiered on Oct. 6, 2012

My new work Morning at the Window for soprano, flute, and piano is selected to be premiered at the 2012 Taipei International New Music Festival at the Song-Yi Hall of the Soochow University in Taipei on October 6, 2012.

https://sites.google.com/site/taipeinewmusic/zh/concerts

Title: Morning at the Window
Finished Year: 2012
Duration: ca. 8 min


Program Notes:

The lyrics of this piece are from T.S. Eliot’s poem Morning at the Window which presents a vision of modern society characterized by decay and weary detachment, where human interaction is limited by the apathy and emotional distance. The music is sometimes calm, and sometimes agitated to convey the viewer’s apathy and the depression of the people on the street. In order to achieve better sonority, sometimes the singer is asked to hum like an instrument instead of singing the lyrics. For  emphasizing the imageries in the poem and for echoing the vocal part, sometimes the flutist is asked to whisper the imageries of depression such as “trampled edges”, “damp souls”, “twisted faces”, “aimless smile” when playing the flute at the same time.

The lyrics by T.S. Eliot are as follows:

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
The brown waves of fog toss up to me
     
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.