1. Quiet but still there
2. More beautiful in adversity
3. Exert more power
 
“How have you lived, and how will you live?”. This is what I value most as an individual, so I try to pursue it, and this is why I always ask myself this matter. As I wrote this piece in the middle of the pandemic, this became a bigger question for me.

 

The title of this piece, 'spes', which means 'hope' in Latin, is my answer to these questions. The metaphor of hope as a bird in Emily Dickinson's 'Hope is a Thing with Feathers' strongly resonated with my own perspective and experiences, igniting a desire within me to convey my emotions and thoughts through my music.

 

In this piece, I reimagined each stanza of the poem into each movement. Each portrays different situations or emotional states ranging from calm to bright. All three movements are constructed around controlling pitch center and harmonic structure. The lyrics are written in a mixture of English and IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) according to the appropriate context. Sometimes vowels and consonants reemerge throughout the composition at random.