Mirage Bazaar is a String Quartet I composed in the Summer of 2016. This is a piece of program music, a piece of music which is meant to tell a story, or portray a mood or feeling. The inspiration behind the piece came from the idea of this wanderer who becomes desperately lost while exploring the desert. Being without water for quite a while the wanderer becomes dehydrated. Night falls. Deliriously, the wanderer climbs to the top of a sand dune to see a lively bazaar in the middle of the barren landscape. This piece is the unfolding of the wanderer’s journey through this hallucination. The primary theme is introduced following a brief thematic introduction. This theme is the basis of the entire piece, constituting the mass majority of the inner workings of the music. From the use of thematic retrograde (the melody appearing backwards) to rhythmic augmentation (the melody appearing twice as long) the primary theme is manipulated and distorted throughout the entire piece in many ways. In the B section the mood of the music shifts as the wanderer is cast into a deep sleep. With eyes closed, the protagonist can hear the sounds of the bazaar happening all around them, and through their delusion the penetrating voice of the sorceress appears; trying to coax the wanderer from their deep slumber (through use of a 12-tone row). Suddenly! The wanderer is pulled from their sleep to find the bazaar is being swallowed into the earth around them. As the sun rises the wanderer races to the top of the crumbling dunes just as the bazaar is plunged down into the desert sand.

Mirage Bazaar for String Quartet; John Philip Sessions, Composer.

My name is John Sessions and I created this soundcloud profile to showcase recordings of my original compositions. I am currently pursuing my Masters in Composition from Texas State University under the tutelage of Dr. Michael Ippolito and Dr. Thomas Clark. Please feel free to take a listen and reach out to me if you'd like to talk about anything you hear. 