Variations on Emotion No. 8 - Compassion/Sadness - "Kassandra"
I know this one already exists on my Youtube, but it's part of this suite.
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 labeled 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 eighth of eleven, being Compassion/Sadness.
"Sadness is a profound emotion that I found rather easy to represent musically. There is such a long and rich lineage of music relating to sadness. I was able to draw upon that and build even further. It was one of the pieces that I'm most proud of for a multitude of reasons. The piece itself I find endearing and quite beautiful. But, as well as that, my orchestration techniques were better than a lot of previous work that I've done. It's definitely in the top ten I've written. There are three themes within this piece that are heard. The main theme that you hear at the opening on the piece on the piccolo, the lighter and happier theme that you hear soon after (first on the oboe and then high strings) and the final theme at the end of the piece which is rather tragic sounding. Together this mastery of themes made for an interesting piece and is just gave it that much more colour and excitement. Whereas some of the other pieces were ambience based, this one was most definitely melodically based. I took the previous idea of basing a love theme in a minor key and built upon it. I was again inspired by the likes of John Williams and James Horner. The title of the piece came from a friend of mine. The piece is somewhat of a reflection of her life. It has its ups and downs just as her life has been, and I thought it would be nice to give something back to her. If it were not even named, most could probably identify the emotion with no trouble at all. It has a very distinct and colourful sound. I wanted it to be sad, but also joyous at the same time and I think I was able to accomplish that." - Travis Grubissi
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