Stardust is a piano octet grouped into two string trios, double bass, and piano. This is an extremely personal piece to me, as it was written specifically about the process of letting go of the religion I was raised in and accepting my own atheistic view of death and immortality. The piece explores concepts of death, fear, grief, and spirituality. Stardust is named for the exhortation that we can find comfort in the fact that we are made of stardust and will continue to have a role in the cosmos after we die. 
Because Stardust is a reflective piece on spirituality and death, I consider it a small-scale instrumental requiem. 


I
The first movement starts as a motet. The main theme of the motet, which henceforth I'll be referring to as the "Ave Maria" theme, has several transformations throughout this piece. After the motet comes an "Amen" that ends with a secondary dominant instead of having a major plagal cadence, suggesting that the "Amen" is indecisive. Immediately after this motet comes a mournful melody played in the 1st trio violin. Then come high sustained strings. The piano enters with rolled chords and a march-like rhythm that recurs throughout the whole piece. The viola and 'celli play a lament that blossoms into three parts from a unision F#. This lament is a quotation from the motet "When David Heard" by Renaissance composer Thomas Tomkins. Then, the Ave Maria theme comes back in e minor while the strings play tremolo. From here, the rest of the movement is vivace. The violin melody and the Tomkins theme come back again with a tremolo piano underneath. The piano part gets faster and more rhythmically frenzied until it finally winds down in the last few measures. 

II
This starts out as a funeral dirge. The piano is playing a march-like rhythm that was hinted at in the first movement while the lower strings sustain fifths. The violin theme from the first movement comes back here, but is fragmented to suggest decomposition. The bass and 2nd trio 'cello are on a C# until measure 14, when they move to an F#. This change initiates a chromatic descending bass line, hinting at a descent into earth. The piano stays vehemently on C# throughout all of this. All of a sudden, the piano erupts into a dark and dance-like melody. The strings gradually join in and play with this, supporting the piano with a low hum, and playing quarter notes against the piano's dotted quarters. This ends abruptly in e minor. High trilling strings with the piano playing the Ave Maria theme underneath. Then the trilling dies out and e minor turns into E Major. The sustained strings create a melting quality. The resolution to E Major is symbolic of ashes becoming earth. All parts fall to an E at the end of this movement, symbolizing earth becoming stardust. 

III
The theme from the end of the second movement comes back immediately here in the piano, but instead of being sustained, each beat is re-articulated like a pulse, or church bells. The theme starts out from a D Major triad and separates into six voices. Then the Ave Maria motif comes back in d minor, a key often used to evoke darkness, such as in the Mozart and Fauré requiems . This theme resolves in D Major, a bright key, and then quickly tonicizes to B-flat. The piano's sextuplets add a rhythmic impetus and a lighthearted quality to the sustained strings. This stops abruptly, then the strings begin again, in sustained, long lines, and build up to a g minor recapitulation of the mournful violin melody accompanied by piano sextuplets. This theme ends in C Major and stops suddenly with the piano articulating middle C in a rhythmic hybrid of the Ave Maria theme and the funeral dirge rhythm from the beginning of the second movement. I chose C Major consciously; it suggests purity and peace. Gradually, the strings come in repeating the themes from the beginning of the first movement. The "amen" of my piece is a major plagal cadence approached by minor iv.

Price  Stardust (2012)

Passacaglia has four sections that are built on a 6-measure pattern on a descending chromatic bass line (F# to C#). Each section is hinting toward a resolution on a cadential 6/4, but they never do until measure 27. This was done to increase tension and evoke a feeling of longing for a resolution. Finally, after four cycles of this pattern, a half cadence is earned. There is a fermata over the cadence, acting as a release from the gravitas of the first 27 bars. After that, there is a short contrapuntal section acting as a lament. This is the only passage in the piece where the 6-measure pattern of descending chromaticism is absent. The last eight measures of the Passacaglia are built on the 6-measure pattern, this time retrograded as an ascending chromatic bass line ending on a Picardy third. 

Katherine Price