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.

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

Ania Vu