Mica

for 2 violins, viola, cello, and piano. 16’

I was inspired to write this piece by an idea of the Danish esoteric mystic Martinus Thomsen, who believed that humans have not only lived past lives as animals and plants, but even as minerals. The notion that consciousness can manifest through the geometry of nature is quite intuitive to me, and echos similar ideas in the Islamic arts, where different rotational symmetries reflect different attributes of God. The crystalline structure of mica is made up of vanishingly thin layers, like phyllo on the atomic scale. I imagine that minerals would perceive time much differently than us... probably at a vast scale. Therefore I chose to write a passacaglia with an extremely slow and hidden theme.

Photo credits:

Pascal Terjan, https://www.flickr.com/photos/cmoi/6911818878/

Lille Natural History Museum https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cristal_Carborandum,_Carborundum,_Moissanite_artificielle_FL_GLAM_MHNL_08.JPG
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Summit Steps Minerals
https://summits-steps-minerals.myshopify.com/products/green-tourmaline-w-quartz