String quartet no. 2 (2001)
Duration 13 minutes
Performance
November 2001 Juilliard Composers’ Concert, Paul Recital Hall
Prize
Palmer Dixon Prize, Juilliard Composition Department Highest Honor, 2002.
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, International Alliance for Women in Music, 2002.
Program Notes
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I.In The Beginning
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II.Tao I
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III.A Spiritual Dance
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IV.Tao II
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V.Arrival & Departure
String Quartet No. 2 was inspired by an interesting book "Lao Tzu vs. The Bible," written by a Chinese Christian philosopher. The philosophical and historical similarities and differences pointed out by this comparison of Eastern and Western cultures aroused my interests in writing a piece with this idea. This was my first attempt to use philosophical concepts as inspiration for my music and to transform spiritual states into acoustic media.
Since the Yin-Yang Tai-Chi symbol (a circle symbol displays two primal opposing but complementary principles of cosmos) represents the great emphasis of Chinese philosophy on the cosmos, I used the idea of circle of fifth to correspond to this concept throughout the entire piece. The fundamental harmonic and melodic elements from which the quartet develop are clear from the beginning - The first chord of this quartet is built from the interval fifth, and the first theme which the first violin introduces is also based on interval fifth. Furthermore, the number of movements in this quartet is five. The concepts of these five movements also correspond to the formal structure. The third movement A Spiritual Dance is considered as the middle point of the cycle. The ideas of the second and fourth movements Tao I & II are related to each other; and the last movement Arrival & Departure is the ultimate of the first one In The Beginning. The arrangement of this musical form for me is a way to illustrate the spirit of the circular symbol of the cosmos.
