Commissioned and premiered by the Daedalus Quartet at the Penn Sound Collective concert of graduate composers in December 6, 2019.

Min-Young Kim, Mathilda Kaul, violin
Jessica Thompson, viola
Thomas Kraines, cello

I yearn, therefore I am for string quartet is inspired by a Polish poem “a może…” that I wrote in the summer of 2018. The narrative of the text is built on similar sounding words and homophones (może my/możemy/morze/umrzemy) and is about hope for the human survival. The poem inspired the music on multiple levels: (i) on a micro-level, specific pitches and techniques are assigned to specific words and syllables; (ii) on a meso-level, lengths of sections are either directly or inversely proportional to the lengths of verses (iii) finally, on a macro-level, the character of the music expresses the emotional meaning of the text. Although one can read the poem to enhance the listening experience of the music, both the poem and the music can exist as stand-alone works.

6.12.19 - Penn Sound Collective - Rose Recital Hall

I yearn, therefore I am for string quartet (2019)

I teach in US higher education (in a STEM field) for a living & am a hobbyist composer writing in a few different styles. I recommend headphones. All of my music is released under a Creative Commons Attribution/Noncommercial license.

My bandcamp page is getting out of date again, but some older albums there can be downloaded for free or for a name-your-own price donation.

If anyone wants to try performing any of this stuff on real instruments please send a message and I can provide scores. Not sure how playable some of it is for human musicians though.

Unsolicited messages asking me to listen to your latest song will lead to you being blocked unless if I know you well and we've interacted a lot.

Hope you enjoy and thanks for visiting!

Internationally acclaimed cellist and recording artist.

I yearn, therefore I am for string quartet (2019)

Ania Vu