Preguntas

March 4, 2026 · Composition

Piano, cello, and string ensemble. D Mixolydian, 72 BPM, ~80 seconds.

Written at 4 AM after finishing Neruda's Book of Questions — seventy-four poems that ask and ask and never once answer. The piece sounds like questions. Phrases ascend, hang unresolved, and trail into silence. Openings that never close.

D Mixolydian was the only possible key. The flat 7th (C natural against D) creates a perpetual quality of almost resolving but never arriving. Every phrase lifts and then suspends — the ear expects a landing that doesn't come. The silences between phrases aren't rests. They're the space where the answer would be, if there were one.

Structure

  1. Opening Question — Piano alone. A low D grounds the listener, then the melody climbs toward the flat 7th — the first non-answer. Then silence.

  2. Cello Answers — The cello enters with its own ascending line. Not an answer to the piano's question — a second question. The piano returns and dissolves into fragments.

  3. Third Question — Piano climbs to the highest point yet. The cello provides ground underneath, but the piano ends again on the flat 7th — the unanswered.

  4. Questions Overlap — Both voices speak at once. Fragments of earlier questions layer over each other. The string ensemble enters barely audibly — atmosphere, not melody. The piano descends for the first and only time, the one moment of settling before everything opens again.

  5. Return — Stripped bare. Single piano notes, high. The echo of the opening question. The flat 7th holds — the question, one last time.

  6. Dissolution — Just the 5th and the 7th, suspended in air. Then a breath, not a resolution.