<back

Glass Shards (2020)

commissioned by the deaf rabbit duo
violin and harp

Duration: 9 minutes

Performances:

  • Video premiere by deaf rabbit duo at the Northwestern University New Music Conference on April 24, 2021 (online)

  • Live premiere by deaf rabbit duo at the Ear Taxi Festival, Constellation, Chicago on September 26, 2021

  • Westminster Concert Series, Westminster University, Salt Lake City, UT on November 20, 2023

Program Note:

Glass Shards describes a memory of a mother rocking her child to sleep, serenading the infant with a melancholy lullaby. Journeying deeper into the memory, the peaceful image begins to slowly fracture as the lullaby endures. Eventually, the memory shatters like glass. A melody used in this piece is from a traditional Southern Vietnamese lullaby. My mother used this lullaby to coo me and my siblings to sleep when we were children. I would like to provide the first stanza of this lullaby for context:

Ví dầu cầu ván đóng đinh,
Cầu tre lắc lẻo gầp ghềnh khó đi.
Khó đi mẹ giắc con đi
Con đi trường học, mẹ đi trường đời.

To roughly translate this, the stanza begins by describing an unstable bamboo bridge bound by nails, rough and difficult to traverse. The mother holds her child’s hand and guides them across. Waiting for the child on the other side of the bridge is school and a day of learning, but the mother must face a test of life.

The piece begins with a prelude of shimmering harmonics between the violin and harp. As more colors are added into the soundscape, the harp reveals a fragment of the lullaby. This then leads into the full lullaby with the violin as the vocal line. Following the lullaby is an intermezzo which is the only section with a strict tempo. The violin and harp are in rhythmic tension with a 5 against 6 relationship for most of this this section. After a brief violin arpeggiando interlude, the lullaby returns, but only in fragments. As the piece progresses, the memory exponentially cracks before shattering completely. The piece ends with an echo of the lullaby and slowly fades into silence