Chamber and Choral Music

(selected compositions)

Encounters (2024, for String Quartet) 

Performed by the Ciompi Quartet (Eric Pritchard, Hsiaomei Ku, Jonathan Bagg, Caroline Stinson) at Duke University, March 3, 2025     

The piece is conceived as a fantasia on the melody of Lanhuahua (兰花花). The melody is one of the most famous examples of the Xintianyou (信天游) folk music style from Shaanxi Province.

The original song tells of a beautiful girl that flees a prearranged marriage in order to return to her former beloved. The story has an open ending, since we don’t know the fate of the lovers. The music follows the story loosely, alternating between languid and dreamy moments and forceful drives, meant to recall her struggles and determination.

I called the composition Encounters because it blends two very different traditions and ways of making music. I united traditional Chinese melodizing with dense Western harmonies and textures. The very ensemble of the string quartet is one of the finest expressions of Western culture. It can nonetheless sing Chinese melodies beautifully. 

Due Notturni (2015, for Flute and Piano)

Performed by Clara Novakova and Wonmin Kim at Soochow University, May 17, 2023

The two compositions presented in this set, despite their different character, share a fundamentally nocturnal quality. The first piece, warmer, is inspired primarily by the idea of movement and is divided in two parts. In the first part, I imagined a gentle breeze caressing a shrub at night. The beginning of the piece describes an immobile, suspenseful atmosphere, then the piano starts playing arabesques, which symbolize the movement of the leaves. These waves fade, accompanying the listener to the second part of the short composition, more assertive. 

In the second notturno, colder in character, I tried to evoke the calm of the night by using the piano in a register similar to that of the flute. This calm is abruptly broken in the middle of the piece with sudden and prominent piano chords. Slowly, afterwards, the nocturnal atmosphere is recomposed; the piece ends on a deep, dark note. 

Score available in PDF or hard copy HERE (DoNeMus Webshop)

Solo (2021, for Piano)

Performed by Daniel Seyfried in Baldwin Auditorium, May 7, 2021.

One of the infinite ways of composing music consists of sitting at the piano, alone – hence the title Solo – starting to dream and exploring endless combinations of sounds, letting the mind go, and then fixing on paper the best results of those sessions. With this piece, I try to capture the magic of some of those moments while also recounting something about the creative process itself in a self-reflective way.

In fact, the actual creative unfolding is often not as linear as what you will hear. I “cut out the dull bits” and chose not to insert in the final composition the countless interruptions, temper tantrums, and dead ends that often pervade such sessions. Nonetheless, as you will hear, I did describe some ‘failed attempts,’ and the piece does mock some hitches and glitches of the creative process. In writing this music, I tried to create something unique and poetic.

Score available in PDF or hard copy HERE (DoNeMus Webshop)

Score available in PDF or hard copy HERE (DoNeMus Webshop)

Conversation With Seneca (2018, for String Trio)

Recorded by the JACK Quartet at Duke University, November 18, 2018.

The piece reflects on some passages of Seneca’s Moral Letters to Lucilius, more specifically on his words regarding the construction of our happiness. Seneca believes that joy should not be the result of external factors, but rather that it derives from our own work on ourselves. The trio is conceived as a fractured, post-modernist re-exploration of the Palestrinian counterpoint – the most authoritative source of musical serenity and meditative kind of joy I could think of. No hierarchy between the melodic lines is established. The contrapuntal voices develop constant variations of a few melodic and rhythmic patterns. On a poetic level, the melodies are, for the most part, lyrical élans, often abruptly interrupted. They recount a rationality that strives to weave its fabric, aware of the finiteness of its time. The circularity of the formal construction of the piece, its incessant rhythmic fragmentation, and the diatonicism that characterizes it, suggest torment. 

Score available in PDF or hard copy HERE (DoNeMus Webshop)

Procul Recedant (2018, for String Quartet)

Recorded by the JACK Quartet at Duke University, April 24, 2018.

The title of this composition for string quartet is borrowed from a line of the hymn Te Lucis Ante Terminum [To Thee before the close of day]. This plain chant is part of the Roman breviary and is meant to be sung at Compline (Prayers at the End of the Day, after sunset). The prayer beseeches the Creator to drive away nocturnal nightmares. The following verses in particular inspired the composition: 

Procul recédant sómnia
et nóctium phantásmata;
hostémque nostrum cómprime,
ne polluántur córpora.

[From all ill dreams defend our sight, From the fears and terrors of the night; Withhold from us our ghostly foe, So that our bodies will not be polluted.]

The piece is conceived as a modernist, fragmented nocturne. Short, sudden bursts of sound energy begin the composition. An ethereal section follows them. Ulterior fragmentation, with a return of the introductory sound bursts, leads to a section in which the first violin, after a brief solo, plays isolated in a very high register. The central part of the piece is in strong opposition to the diaphanous sonorities that dominate in the beginning. It has a strenuous and tormented character. As the sound dissolves again into ghostly sonorities, part of the melody of the original plain chant can be heard. It is played by the first violin in conjunction with a cello pizzicato. Then, after a last apparition of the initial sound bursts, only fragments of themes remain, as memories of a distant dream. The piece ends with an afterthought in the style of a berceuse.