The End of the World

The End of the World is a composition for wind ensemble that consisted of the intertwining between two musical themes: The War Theme and The Innocent Souls Theme.

The War Theme is represented by the dissonance harmony constructed based on the octatonic scales, various chaotic noises and sounds produced by the instruments, and the military-like march music. Within the war theme, it featured the sound of the woodblocks to symbolize the symbol created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 of the Doomsday Clock, the metaphor to represent how close humanity is to self-destruction. It also featured the quotation from Gregorian Chant “Dies Irae” and the rhythmic motif of the morse code of SOS (three dots / three dashes / three dots  . . . _ _ _ . . .) to symbolize the distress call of those who suffered in the war.

The Innocent Souls Theme is represented by the simple melody based on the nursery rhymes, Ring Around the Rosie. The tune is constructed on the third interval and is used throughout the piece accompanied with the joyful and energetic music to depict the smile and laughter of the children, of the people.

After all those unsettling events throughout the world, I have started sketching this composition in mid-2022 and completed the piece in late-2022. The program of the piece is as follows:

The piece starts with the portrayal of the war scene with all of the fighting and battles. The scene then switches to the peaceful atmosphere with the simple melody to introduce the Innocent Souls Theme. As the tune goes on and gradually has a more joyful atmosphere, the foreshadowing of the War Theme occurs, before instantly blasting into the complete War Theme. After the War Theme, the Innocent Souls Theme returns once again but with a less lively and more solemn atmosphere. Then it gradually became more vibrant to symbolize the hope for a better future.

The piece ends with a climatic finale before abruptly disrupted by the War Theme once again. This is the statement of this whole composition: to stop all of these unsettling events, the chaos, the war before there would not be any world left for the future generation, hence the title: the End of the World. But yet, as things may seem so dark and despair, there is still always, … hope. The innocent souls theme returns for the final time, ending the piece.

I dedicated the piece to the innocent souls who were the victims of the unimaginable violence.

Let there be peace on earth.