A Drop of Light

Year Composed:	2019
Instrumentation:	cl, bsn, hn, 2 vln, vla, vcl, cb
Duration	20 minutes

I	The Temple of a Thousand Doors
II	The Gardens of Nythalla
III	The Dying Light

Program Notes

A Drop of Light is one of my most personal works. While I will refrain - on this occasion - from attempting to articulate whatever meaning lies behind the music in too much detail, I hope that listeners will nonetheless discover in this piece a sincerity of expression that they can identify with.

Each of the three movements bears a title with a particular literary association, as well as a connection to my childhood. The first, "Temple of a Thousand Doors," is a reference to a chapter in Michael Ende's children's novel, The Neverending Story, where Bastian, the story's protagonist, finds himself in an infinite maze of doors; only by making a genuine, authentic wish can he escape. The movement opens with a ghostly lullaby, followed by a frenetic Allegro, full of labyrinthine twists and strange, musical cul-de-sacs. The title of the second movement, "The Gardens of Nythalla," references a fictional place of my own imagination - a mythical city in the sky whose inhabitants have built a living paradise, free of conflict and suffering. The third movement, titled "The Dying Light," alludes to Dylan Thomas's famous - and emotionally charged - poem, Do not go gentle into that good night. Here, a sinfonia composed in a Handelian idiom emerges from the shadows of the past, not as an object of irony, but as part of an urgent, deeper search for meaning: an attempt to express the intangible, beyond the boundaries of my own natural vocabulary.

Finally, the title of the work itself was conceived in response to stories of people experiencing profound joy under the most difficult of circumstances. Such stories always serve to remind me that 'drops of light' exist even in the darkest of times.

I am grateful to Octagon for commissioning me, and for affording me to scope and creative space to explore the edges of my musical imagination.

Performances

• November 24, 2019 - Octagon. Dominion Chalmers, Ottawa
• August 7, 2021 - Sinn-Phonietta, conducted by Tobias Vogt. Cornelius Kirche Hamburg Fischbek, Hamburg, Germany

Articles

• November 22, 2019 - The Ottawa Citizen - "Composer Kevin Lau sheds light on his new work, A Drop of Light"

Commissions and Awards

• Commissioned by Octagon with generous funding from the Canada Council of the Arts.