Symphony in Waves
String Quartet No.1
(musica celestis)
PHCD165 | Phoenix CD
Name | Credit | |
---|---|---|
Aaron Jay Kernis | Composer | |
Gerard Schwarz | Conductor | |
Lark Quartet | String Quartet |
New York Chamber Symphony
Gerard Schwarz, conductor
The Lark Quartet
Prior to writing this work in 1989 I never imagined I would write a symphony. It seemed such an outdated and irrelevant form. But since that time I’ve become increasingly excited by the communicative potential, by the highly varied ideas and emotions, latent in traditional forms. I hope to find what ‘symphony’ means to me, to define the form for myself, by bringing my own experiences and passions to it.
I am not dealing with waves in a strictly programmatic sense. I think about waves of sound in addition to those of wind and water. Each movement uses some aspect of wave motion: swells and troughs of dynamics, densities, and instrumental color: the ‘sounds’ of light broken into flickering bits by water’s action.