Variations on Emotion No. 1 - Despair - "The Dearly Departed"
About two years ago now, I wrote a suite of 11 pieces called Variations on Emotion. As the title might suggest, all of the pieces are about a separate emotion that I had chosen to represent musically. Each piece is labled with the emotion attached to it, and each title was inspired by the emotion. It was a purely emotional experience and I attached stories to most of them afterward, as represented by the title. This is the first of eleven, being Despair.
To address despair, I decided to take a somewhat different approach than I ended up using for most of the other pieces that I would compose. First, I had to decide what despair meant to me. Indeed, that is an excellent question to begin with when writing about anything, even if it is musically. In a way, I still do not know completely what it means to me. Many emotions are still a mystery to me. How do I convey something I'm not fully sure of, especially through music? I decided that despair, to me, meant one would be feeling alone and sad, accompanied by a loss of hope. Once I had decided what the piece was to convey, beginning to write it was no trouble at all. In fact, it came rather quickly. I chose to use very few instruments in the piece to help convey the feeling of solitude. I used a harp, flute and cello. All solo instruments, again adding to that feeling of solitude one might have while in a state of despair. The music is slow, sad and introspective. A great deal of the piece is devoid of melody because I wanted it to be more ambient than melodic. The only melody is the opening melody that I give the listener, which is only two bars long, which also returns near the end of the piece. I felt that the ambient mood could better convey the looming quality that despair seems to have. It seems as though it is able to take hold of you like a sickness, and despair is indeed not one of the healthiest emotions. Finally, I chose to call the piece The Dearly Departed because often times, death can leave us in a state of despair and confusion. I hope that the listener is able to identify with this piece in someway and that I have accurately conveyed the emotion of despair.
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