Light Symbolic

Light Symbolic, Haralabos [Harry] Stafylakis (2023)for piano and percussion Challenged to compose a showpiece for the SHHH!! ensemble that would fit thematically with their Starry Night program, I naturally turned for inspiration to one of my favorite subjects to amateurishly and inadequately explore: astronomy. Cast in two movements, Light Symbolic assumes an idealized perspective on astronomical events occurring at massive scales that defy human intuition. The first movement – the quiet violence of celestial motion – is a largely textural and atmospheric piece that expresses wonder at the incomprehensible rates of motion within and between solar systems, while recognizing that the violent dance of stars, planets, and other large bodies occurs within the graceful silence of the vacuum of space. The second movement – death of a sun, act of creation – takes a more aggressive, rhythmically propulsive slant, an evocation of the process by which the elements are formed as the result of the