I composed Onyx is the Color during the Silence of Järvenpää while thinking of Sibelius.

The central question is: what does it mean, for a composer, to be silent? Is it scary, frustrating? Or is it comfort, despair, resignation?

Sibelius notoriously didn’t produce any major work for the last thirty years of his life. He retired to Järvenpää, a small town 23 miles north of the Finnish Capital, Helsinki, with this wife Aino, and for thirty years, wrote only sporadic Masonic songs here and there, plus an abortive attempt towards the damnedly impregnable eighth symphony.

Undoubtedly, well-versed musicologists interpellated this period as the Silence of Järvenpää. Partially as a result of such nomenclatural poetics, I think the color he saw must have been onyx. Not necessarily because it must be distressful to not write music, but really there’s something inexplicably associative between pure darkness and silence. One is also not entirely wrong if one draws upon the bleak, icy, sparsely-inhabited landscape of Finland with a thousand frozen lakes, the stereotypical Nordic scenery in popular imagination.

Lastly, Messiaen must be dully acknowledged here, as I almost directly poached his idea of labelling all the animals and natural elements from Catalogue d’oiseaux. The overwhelming ubiquity of tritone could also be attributed to the obsessive Messiaenian predilection for this unique, symmetrical yet weirdly directional leading tone.

This music is written for flutist Christian Paquette, whose sensibility, passion, kindness and professionalism have been absolutely integral to the completion of this piece. Christian’s fabulously riveting rendition of the music brings the much-needed invigorating life into this highly technically challenging dialogue between the acoustic and the electronic.

I would like to thank Dr. Sky Macklay for connecting me with this wonderful opportunity and helping me workshop the composition from its very inception in September all the way up to mid-November. Dr. Macklay’s lessons have not only been extremely instrumental in the making Onyx is the Color during the Silence of Järvenpää, but also incredibly essential to my own growth as a musician and human being.

I also deeply appreciate Prof. Marina Piccinini’s contribution during the flute studio master class. Her input has become the indispensable wisdom as I clarified notational issues in the final editing process.

*Photo credit: Louise Bourgeois

Onyx is the Color during the Silence of Järvenpää

“Vergangenheitsbewältigung” is the German agglutinative word that means "the process of coping with the past. I first encountered this concept in a class on Wagner taught by Professor Matthew Reese at the Peabody Institute. The article of that week was talking about how the grandson (Wieland) of Richard Wagner was trying to produce and stage his grandfather's operas differently so as to distance the contemporary productions from the previous versions so closely associated with the recently fallen Nazi regime.

	Then it occurred to me that individual, every nation, is constantly and perpetually dealing with the past, as long as they exist in the temporal dimension. It is, in fact, impossible to escape the past, since what we do and think at the present moment is built upon the accumulation of actions and thoughts we have done so far, and whatever we do presently instantaneously becomes the past the next second, which in turn informs our future self, as the past constitutes an integral, constituent part of it. It is the only way of being. It is also all we've got.

	Recently, I have been grappling with the past myself, working through memories and traumas, but also seeing how much I've grown as  a composer and as a person. Music, as it exists and flows in time, is to me the perfect medium to metaphorically capture this arduous process of coping with the past, since music itself is constantly referring back to as well as confronted by the music that precedes it, and that the music at hand is inevitably the crystallization of the composer's practice and listening in the past.

Vergangenheitsbewältigung

I started writing Unicorn in Aspen, Colorado, where the boundary between civilization and wild fauna is oftentimes blurred. After many personal encounters as well as hearing other people’s stories of their encounters, I began to dream about a fantastical creature roaming rather frantically through the woods, like Barber’s wandering, weeping hungry deer. Musically, my goal is to explore a clarity in texture, a dynamism in rhythm, a juxtaposition of contrasting materials, and a pulsating repetition, tapping into the electrifying energy of the five instruments (flute, bass flute, bassoon, violin, and piano), given their diverse timbral palettes and a huge registral range. The desired performance time is 8-10 minutes.

Unicorn

from time to time i think of a deceased relative

iii. is crying really a deadly sin

ii. from time to time i think of a deceased relative

short recitation with music

text and music by Victor Cui (2022)

i. each moving feels like a pupation

Salut

Cui, Victor Must There Be A Good Reason?

i hear the years suddenly assailing

Etude for self-designed cluster keyboard, exploring a dense frequential space bordering noise.

Etude for Cluster Machine

Cavafy Songs (2023), for soprano, viola, and piano

Soprano: Julia Holoman
Viola: Jimmy Cunningham
Piano: Xingyi Betty Chen
Conductor: Victor Cui

Premiere performance on Nov 18th, 2023, in Hirsch Recital Hall at Shepherd School of Music


I.
Life cold and vain

It’s a little thing to think about that life
Is just the sounds of the flute
And nothing else

Dry anesthesia plagues the body
Never does the pain
Overwhelm the struggle of life

But, but, but…

Your judgment is error
And injustice

The walls of his house are of emerald

Life cold and vain


II.
There comes a day
When they have to say the big Yes
Or the big No

It goes to his honor and belief

The denier does not repent
If asked again, he would say No

Anyone who has the Yes
Is immediately apparent

There comes a day
When the big Yes, and the big No
He would say…

There comes a day
They say the big Yes

It goes to his honor and belief

The denier does not repent


III.
He is the son of
A tyrannized, impoverished sailor
From the island in the Aegean Sea

His shoes were torn and pitiful
His hands were stained
With rust and oil

In the evening
If there was anything
That he really wanted
Some tie a bit expensive
Some tie for Sunday
Or if he had seen, and longed for
Some nice blue shirt

His body will sell for a thaler or two
His body will sell for a thaler or two
His body will sell

No statue, or painting of his was made
Of cour


IV.
“Gods do not die
Faith dies of the ungrateful crowd of immortals

The Gods are immortal
In the Gods memories bloom
The pulses of their first love”

Let the pleasure that is acquired!
Morbidly and with decay be loved even more

Let the pleasure that is acquired!
Morbidly and with decay be loved even more

Let the pleasure that is acquired
Morbidly, morbidly, morbidly
And with decay, be loved even more
Loved even more!

Let the pleasure that is acquired
Be loved morbidly, even more
More with decay, decay, decay

Let the pleasure with decay
Be loved
Morbidly, morbidly, morbidly acquired
Morbidly, and with decay acquired

Let the pleasure that is acquired
Morbidly and with decay
Be loved, loved, loved, loved even more!

An erotic intensity
That health does not know!



* All texts adapted from the poetry of C. P. Cavafy
I. Life cold and vain adapted from Aedos
II. There comes a day adapted from Che fece… Il gran rifiuto…
III. He is the son adapted from Days of 1909, ’10, and ’11
IV. Let the pleasure adapted from Memory and Imenos

Cavafy Songs

“fundamentally musical”  — Olga and Paul Menn Foundation

Growing up in the suburb of Beijing, I have always been fascinated by the complex soundscape of the mountain. Crickets’ surreptitious chirping, cicadas’ brazen buzzing, katydids’ gentle lullaby immediately hushed as soon as you divert your footstep towards their lodging, against the cheerful clapping waves of pagoda tree leaves, the rustling of honey suckle and Chinese mahogany, the occasional owl hooting, and the faint fireworks from afar. Without even the slightest notion of art music, I was nourished by the polyphony of nature.

For that reason, I have always been attracted to sounds that are visceral, boisterous, and raw, and I strive to create ritualistic sonic tapestries that invoke the internal drama of sound. I especially love unconventional instrument combos, or the unconventional sound palettes of conventional groups, for they represent to me something whimsical and spontaneous, something less formulaic, something extremely human. What if the cello plays higher than the violin? What about an orchestra that only whispers? What does it mean, the seismic shrill of eight piccolos? Through reversal and subversion, I invent fresh listening experiences untethered to any particular aesthetical bound or moralistic grid.

Vyc

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