Caught Up in Clouds

Score and Parts

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Year: 2016 Timing: 8:40

for String Orchestra

When my would-be father-in-law passed away one month after my engagement, I was unable to articulate any of my emotions in words. For almost a year and a half, they have remained lodged in my soul, dormant. After participating in two memorial services in the following months, my emotions began to take tangible shape in the form of a phrase—Caught Up in Clouds.

Glimpses of a melody, distant echoes of a song from somewhere far-off, began to appear as I stood at the graveside by my grandfather, accompanied by a salute of military cornet as we remembered him. Not words, after all, but music—the one means of harmonizing the grief, the fond reminiscence, the future hope. The tones that emerged recalled the parting words we gave to my father-in-law in memoriam: not "goodbye" but "see you later."