Instrumentation: Violin, piano
Duration: 8 minutes | Advanced
Premiered: Written for Paul Barnes and Teimuraz Janikashvili, and premiered at the Kalos Arts Foundation 2025 Beauty Through Faith Conference
What’s included: Full score + parts (PDF)
Description: This work is a musical analog to Vincent Van Gogh’s famous painting ‘Starry Night’. In that painting, the night sky erupts in whorls and gestures that belie the apparent quietude of the evening sky. Like Van Gogh’s work, this piece is a serenade to the penetration of reality by wonder and beauty, infused with human imagination. Transcendent realities await the receptive eye within the tapestry of creation. The music brings these whorls into the air with the piano surging and flowing beneath a passionate violin solo line soaring above. The violin and piano share and alternate different moments of florid ornamentation of the melody that is built upon heavenward yearning. The textures of the main theme yield to a moment of quiet, awestruck contemplation as the violin stands in the cool of the night, drinking in the ancient light from the stars. This is joined and echoed in the piano before returning to the primary themes. This is a night filled with the wonder of transcendent eternity resonating at the perimeter of what is seen with eyes augmented by that which is seen with the soul.
Instrumentation: Violin, piano
Duration: 8 minutes | Advanced
Premiered: Written for Paul Barnes and Teimuraz Janikashvili, and premiered at the Kalos Arts Foundation 2025 Beauty Through Faith Conference
What’s included: Full score + parts (PDF)
Description: This work is a musical analog to Vincent Van Gogh’s famous painting ‘Starry Night’. In that painting, the night sky erupts in whorls and gestures that belie the apparent quietude of the evening sky. Like Van Gogh’s work, this piece is a serenade to the penetration of reality by wonder and beauty, infused with human imagination. Transcendent realities await the receptive eye within the tapestry of creation. The music brings these whorls into the air with the piano surging and flowing beneath a passionate violin solo line soaring above. The violin and piano share and alternate different moments of florid ornamentation of the melody that is built upon heavenward yearning. The textures of the main theme yield to a moment of quiet, awestruck contemplation as the violin stands in the cool of the night, drinking in the ancient light from the stars. This is joined and echoed in the piano before returning to the primary themes. This is a night filled with the wonder of transcendent eternity resonating at the perimeter of what is seen with eyes augmented by that which is seen with the soul.
