Five Haiku

Five Haiku is somewhat of a tragic (and happy) love story, in which the man is singing about a woman who exists not in his life, but very strongly in his mind, and only in his mind. He has been touched by this woman and cannot let her go from his memory. He sings about all of the emotions, both beautiful and painful that her memory evokes. He is terribly saddened without her and yet her imprint that she has left on him is so strong that he knows he is wonderfully changed forever by her.

Although the title of the piece is Five Haiku and is set to five haiku, the piece opens and closes with a poem. I employed several structural means to mirror the structure of the haiku, which is made up of five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables. Although these specific numbers were not used, the shape of the haiku was. The opening theme in the piano uses this structure with three phrases of short, long, short. This opening theme returns towards the end, but this time in the strings with the same short, long, short phrases. In the greater structure, with the opening and returning idea, it also created a larger short, long, short structure.

Five Haiku is a story about longing and letting go. We seem to always be longing for something and in a certain way it is that longing that keeps us striving forward to reach that unobtainable goal. However, when that longing stifles us and causes us to turn around and to cease facing forward, it is then that the longing must be let go of and there must be a realization that everything in our lives, no matter how wonderful or how horrible, can ultimately change us in the most wonderful ways that we often don't even recognize.