There are works one chooses to write, and works that impose themselves, born from a necessity deeper than the desire to compose.
This piano quartet does not portray death as a brutal ending or a tragedy to be warded off. It tells of the journey one must take to welcome it without letting it destroy us: the inner movement from shock to a form of peace. The music embodies the stages experienced by anyone who has ever lost someone: the initial shock of disbelief, the revolt against what happened, the long crossing through grief, and finally—at the heart of the piece—acceptance, which is not resignation but reconciliation. A death finally looked in the face, and which, by being faced, ceases to cause fear.
I wrote this music in a resolutely romantic language because grief is a visceral experience of body, breath, and a heart that tightens and sometimes relaxes. Æterna offered me what music does best of all: accompany and console through beauty, until peace becomes possible once again.
