Aaron Jay Kernis
SYMPHONY IN WAVES
STRING QUARTET NO.1 (musica celestis)
New York Chamber Symphony
Gerard Schwarz, conductor
The Lark Quartet
Eva Gruesser, Robin Mayforth violin
Anna Kruger, viola Astrid Schween, cello
Prior to writing this work in 1989 I never imagined I would write a symphony. It seemed such an outdated and irrelevant form. But since that time I've become increasingly excited by the communicative potential, by the highly varied ideas and emotions, latent in traditional forms. I hope to find what 'symphony' means to me, to define the form for myself, by bringing my own experiences and passions to it.
I am not dealing with waves in a strictly programmatic sense. I think about waves of sound in addition to those of wind and water. Each movement uses some aspect of wave motion: swells and troughs of dynamics, densities, and instrumental color: the 'sounds' of light broken into flickering bits by water's action.
