An Elegy for Hopes and Dreams

This is a rather melodramatic piece that follows the Five Stages of Grief. I first sketched the piece for string quartet after an absolutely horrific interview at the Royal Northern College of Music. Feeling disheartened and dejected, I got home and messily scribbled on some manuscript paper An Elegy for Hopes and Dreams and started writing this extremely over-dramatic and self- indulgent piece. I had abandoned this piece for an entire year before reviving it and writing the whole piece in just over a week and a half, now reimagined for Piano Trio. The piece starts with an atonal representation of grief before quickly moving into an upbeat "Denial" section which features a sort of fragile and manic sense of repression as a theme that initially sounds upbeat quickly unravels with whole-tone scales and chromatic movement. A representation of "Anger" is then seen with the whole trio playing the same melody with a jarring Bb in the harmony. The denial and anger sections repeat and regress before abruptly moving to a "Bargaining" section in which the original theme, ominously played in the lower piano and cello registers, is juxtaposed with a conjunct, major variation of the same theme in the violin. The "Depression" section takes the form of a cello solo as I find it to be one of the most emotive and expressive instruments and I take inspiration from Elgar's Cello Concerto, which I angstily listened to on the flight home from my aforementioned interview. A lilting and lamenting cello solo is contrasted with an atonal, aimless piano accompaniment which reflects the topic of depression. The bargaining theme reprises slightly with both strings performing the major variation before leading to the final climax. The "Acceptance" section sees the principal theme finally fully resolved in a major mode and with diatonic harmony. This is an expressive section as the whole trio plays the same melody with very simple yet emotive harmonic accompaniment underneath. Here the depression theme pairs with the principal theme coming to a final resolution.