Garuda

Jiaqi Wang

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Quartet

2023

6 min.

Percussion

Unpitched Percussion

Program Notes: A legendary Garuda is a bird with divine powers. It has iron claws, diamond-stone horns, precious pearls on the top of their heads, flashing golden eyes, and huge sword-like golden wings which can spread 3.36 million kilometers apart. It is brave and mysterious, majestic, grand and it has super powers. It lives in the iron tree on the outer coast and feeds on dragons. It is fierce and brutal, but its fate is sad. Because it has eaten many dragons in its life, its body has so much poisonous gas and finally it subjects to self-immolation and death. The burning fire burns its own flesh and blood bones to ashes, but also burns the surrounding mountains and forests. After its body has burned away, only the Garuda’s pure colored glass heart remains because it can not be burned in the body. This piece is structured with three parts, using different rhythmic and textural combinations and different levels of energies to tell the story of the life of Garuda in a simple nutshell. The first section introduces the basic characteristics of the Garuda using simple meter and basic rhythmic patterns. In the second part, the piece uses mixed meter and more polyphonic texture to show the various superpowers of the Garuda. In the last section, the musical material from the first part is extracted again, using a stronger and more intense sound combination to tell the story of the Garuda’s tragic end, when it burns itself to death.
Ensemble Name: UMKC Percussion Ensemble