Arbitrariness in Language

Abstract

This piece is my second work to be based on a particular poem by the Medieval Japanese poet Izumi Shikibu, translating roughly as: one must enter from the darkness into a dark path; shine afar, moon on the edge of the mountains! In this rendering I have become obsessed with the sound and structure of the poem; its rhythms, its irregular repetitions, its balance. My aim has been to create a series or web of translations/transliterations of the sonic material; each consonant and vowel has its pianistic equivalent, sometimes more than one.