Pages — Victor Tswei

Selected Works

Amidst a flock of sleepless birds

(2022-2024)

for string quartet

Performed by @mivosquartet‬ at Valencia International Performance Academy in Valencia, Spain
Audio recording by ‪@EmmanuelBerridoMusic‬

Violin I: Olivie de Prato
Violin II: Maya Bennardo
Viola: Victor Lowrie Tafoya
Cello: Nathan Watts

I started this piece in the summer of 2022, and have been editing it till around May 2024. When I started it, I was looping Навстречу холодному свету (Towards the cold light) by Alyans. One of the lines goes like this: Иной мир и новые звуки среди стай бессонных птиц (Another world and new sounds among flocks of sleepless birds). I found that to be a very poetic imagery for string quartet, as I was trying to conjure up jerky rhythmic counterpoints with gnarly harmonies, like a bunch of insomniac birds pecking violently at each other's flamboyantly plumaged head.

© Copyright 2023 by Victor Tswei 2023
Copyrighted for all countries.
All rights reserved.
Note-setting & editing by Victor Tswei

︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎

Poltergeist of Kayaköy

(2023)

for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano

This recording is done in the Hindemith Music Center, Blonay, Switzerland, during the ‪@soundSCAPEfestival.

Flute: Ksenia Mezhenny
Clarinet: Cameron DeLuca
Violin: Jordan Hadrill
Cello: Peter Ko
Percussion: Corey Denham
Piano: Victoria Yuan

Kayaköy is an abandoned village in Turkey. Once a teeming township with a vibrant Greek culture, it was emptied during the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, following the Greco-Turkish war. Today, the relics of Kayaköy stand in silent witness to the clinical demarcation of modern ethnic nation states.

© Copyright 2024 by Victor Tswei 2024
Copyrighted for all countries.
All rights reserved.
Note-setting & editing by Victor Tswei

︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎

Borseggiatore

(2023)

for piano

Piano: Betty Chen

Borseggiatore started as an innocuous pet project, as a result of my improvisations at the piano.

© Copyright 2024 by Victor Tswei 2024
Copyrighted for all countries.
All rights reserved.
Note-setting & editing by Victor Tswei

S

Grandpa, who was your first love?

(2022 - 2023)

for tenor and piano

Matthew Galvilanez (tenor)
Jonathan Shiin (piano)

Venue: Leith Symington Griswold Hall, Baltimore MD
@ Peabody Institute

© Victor Tswei 2023

“The first half of the piece is based on an online interview, where an old man casually recounts how he met his wife, but with a rather dark turn of event. The second half of the piece features my own poetry, written in the summer of 2022 in Aspen. My seasonal depression really paired well with the old man’s calm resignation.”

“grandpa who was your first love”
“her name was eve.”

“why did you fall in love with her?”
“she was smarter and prettier than i was, and i was wicked smart and good looking.”

“did you ask her out?”
“no she asked me. i was dying to ask her, but i was too shy.”

“how long did you and eve go out?”
“all four years of college.”

“what happened after those four years?”
“i married her, of course.”

“so how long were you married?”
“not long enough: 7 years. she died of ovarian cancer.”

“i am so sorry.”
“no it’s alright. it was a long time ago.”

must there be a good reason
for all these drooping clouds to gather
they congregate, all intimate
blocking the sun

it was raining down the hazy valley
droplets pouring, caressing leaves falling
their tears, their tears, all chilly and helpless
pecking at one heart

a thousand cloudlets traverse rainbow
all shining, fragments scintillating
they snuggle closer, above a silent cathedral
milking for response

︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎

Two Poemes by Stéphane Mallarmé

(2019 - 2023)

for soprano and piano

Rebecca Regan (soprano)
Yangwei Xu (piano)

Venue: Cohen-Davidson Family Theatre, Baltimore MD
@ Peabody Institute

© Victor Cui 2023

“The piece was first conceived on a cruise ship on the Caribeean Sea. I was struck by the immensity and waviness of the ocean, something I was not used to and desperately needed after the severe winter of Chicago. Water reminded me of life and beauty, so did the poetry of Mallarmé.”

I. Le Château de l'Espérance

Ta pâle chevelure ondoie
Parmi les parfums de ta peau
Comme folâtre un blanc drapeau
Dont la soie au soleil blondoie.

Las de battre dans les sanglots
L’air d’un tambour que l’eau défonce,
Mon coeur à son passé renonce
Et, déroulant ta tresse en flots,

Marche à l’assaut, monte, – ou roule ivre
Par des marais de sang, afin
De planter ce drapeau d’or fin
Sur ce sombre château de cuivre –

Où, larmoyant de nonchaloir, L
’Espérance rebrousse et lisse
Sans qu’un astre pâle jaillisse
La Nuit noire comme un chat noir.

II. Salut

Rien, cette écume, vierge vers
À ne désigner que la coupe;
Telle loin se noie une troupe
De sirènes mainte à l’envers.

Nous naviguons, ô mes divers
Amis, moi déjà sur la poupe
Vous l’avant fastueux qui coupe
Le flot de foudres et d’hivers;

Une ivresse belle m’engage
Sans craindre même son tangage
De porter debout ce salut

Solitude, récif, étoile
À n’importe ce qui valut
Le blanc souci de notre toile.

︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎

Not Red, But Blood!

(2023)

for violin, cello, and piano

Ambroise Aubrun (violin)
Derek Stein (cello)
Mari Kawamura (piano)

Venue: Colburn School, Los Angeles CA
@ Impulse New Muisc Festival

© Victor Cui 2023

︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎

i hear the years suddenly assailing

(2023)

for trumpet and horn

Marco Blaauw (trumpet)
Christine Chapman (horn)

Venue: Centre Street Performance Studio, Baltimore MD
@ Peabody Institute

© Victor Cui 2023

︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎

Vyc · Onyx is the Color during the Silence of Järvenpää

Onyx is the Color during the Silence of Järvenpää

(2021)

for flute and electronics

Christian Paquette (flute)

© Victor Cui 2021

“I composed Onyx is the color during the Silence of Järvenpää while thinking of Jean Sibelius.

The question is: what does it mean, for a composer, to be silent? Is it scary, frustrating? Or is it comfort, despair, resignation?

Sibelius notoriously didn’t produce any major work for the last thirty years of his life. He retired to Järvenpää, a small town 23 miles north of the Finnish Capital, Helsinki, with this wife Aino, and for thirty years, during which he wrote only sporadic Masonic songs, plus an abortive attempt towards the damnedly impregnable eighth symphony.

Musicologists interpellated this period as the Silence of Järvenpää. Leaning into the nomenclatural poetics, I think the color he saw must have been onyx. Because it could be distressful to not write music. Also because there’s something inexplicably associative between pure darkness and silence. One is also not entirely wrong if one draws upon the bleak, icy, sparsely-inhabited landscape of Finland with a thousand frozen lakes: the stereotypical Nordic scenery in popular imagination.

Lastly, Messiaen must be acknowledged here, as I borrowed his idea of labelling all the animals and natural elements from Catalogue d’oiseaux, albeit in a less accurate fashion. The overwhelming ubiquity of tritone could also be attributed to the obsessive Messiaenian predilection for this symmetrical yet weirdly directional leading tone.”

︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎︎

Vyc · Etude burlesque

Etude burlesque

(2020)

for Sibelius

Victor Cui (Sibelius)

© Victor Cui 2020

“I got super into putting random stuff into the notaion software. Something really funny came out this time.”