When I first looked at this poem in Japanese, I was in Tokyo to spend a summer with my distant relatives. Since it had been a while to read something in my mother language, it evoked a peculiar nostalgic feeling. The poem’s organic sound flow of Japanese words merged mystically to this poet’s thought on origin of sound. In recognition of the poet as having the same Japanese ethnicity, I became interested in capturing this intimate feeling in music.

The flute and voice interweave a melody line, while the piano feeds textural gestures and plays a foundation of the ensemble’s rhythmic and harmonic unity. The piece opens with a series of six notes (B-A-G-C-E- B), and this single melodic idea gets passed around the ensemble throughout the entire piece. The harmonic scheme is built by having the fourth note of this melody as a root to build a C major seventh chord. The harmonic and melodic structure form around this single idea. Each instrument has an independent line but evolves around the same single idea, as the text explores the creation of music itself.