Blossom Sadness details

Blossom Sadness 

for 2 violins, viola and cello (2012); duration: 14′ 00″; publisher: Australian Music Centre

score available from
Australian Music Centre

program note Blossom Sadness aims to express an underlying fragile sadness amidst beauty as if a type of plum-blossom aesthetic moment had appeared before disappearing into kinaesthetic movement. Korean sonic and Japanese visual cultures inspired the music. The form of the piece is of two evolving climaxes balanced by drone-like fragments at the outset and close. Initially quick interval fragments gradually dissolve over slow cello drones. These are followed by bitter-sweet chords versus solo Pansori-inspired lines that gradually evolve into attacking climactic section of open string and behind-the-bridge multi-stops drawn from Korean court music fragments. Bitter-sweet slowness returns to evolve into a wilder chordal attacking climax, this time more like the driven oneness resonance of samulnori percussion ensembles. This returning wild-momentum is suddenly interrupted several times by the quiet semi-silent microtonal drones of the outset; their stillness intensifying the dance frenzy. This intensification by stillness was inspired by the way Japanese artist Yasuda Yukihiko’s vivid-reds are pushed out into a visual vibrancy by stiller dull-yellow haziness in “Princess Nukda at Asuka in Spring.”