Eventide Reflections

During my senior year of high school, I was heavily fascinated by the concept of nostalgia and thought heavily on how to appropriately portray this emotion without sounding too literal. During this time, I wrote two pieces with nostalgia as the core identity but with different approaches. In Eventide Reflections, I took inspiration from the first work titled The Setting Summer. In the piece, I create this metaphor of sunsets representing the end of childhood and familiar youth. However, in this piece, I asked myself something. What happens after the sun sets? What happens next? The title Eventide Reflections itself cultivates these questions and turns them into a simple yet expressive work for solo piano. The main theme began as a work-in-progress, characterized by forming dense harmonies and creating an open atmosphere and gentle texture through the use of the soft pedal (marked ‘una corda’). Conceptually, I wanted to replicate the texture from Claude Debussy’s “La cathédrale engloutie”, which heavily emphasizes resonance to create the texture of feeling “submerged”. However, I wanted to balance trying something completely new with keeping the work authentic to my style, which led to the decision of keeping the music more “grounded” as opposed to fully freeform in style. During the “con motto” moments in each theme, I wanted to capture the feeling of an internal outcry, within the confines of the piece. Often, in nostalgia, there is a feeling of hope and a desire to relive the same experiences for a second time. This motif is heavily emphasized in the second theme of this piece; each theme incorporates this internal outcry to some extent. At the conclusion of each section, there is an expressionally free-formed measure of 5/4 meant to bring out closure and leave the past somewhat “open-ended” to the listener. These measures create a dreamy texture, adding to the idea of reflecting or going from thought to thought. 

The second theme is a much more personal one, inspired by pieces that inspired me to study music nearly seven years ago such as “Marble Machine” by Wintergatan and “Comptine d'un Autre été” by Yann Tiersen. In this section, I wanted to mimic the alberti bass felt in “Comptine d'un Autre été”, which led to a repetitive sextuplet figure, creating a floating feeling for the right hand to compliment. The texture in the right hand imitates the feeling of bell chimes. This motif mimics the fifths in the right hand from the first theme. Following the bell chimes of the right hand, there’s a new, more grounded theme. This short theme acts as contrast to what we hear at the beginning of the section, but leads directly into a much more passionate con motto section than the first one heard. The modulation from E minor to C# minor creates a bit of surprise to the listener, but combined with a faster tempo, deeply outlines a racing mind, as the feeling of nostalgia has the listener struggling to grasp what was once originally there.