YET IN MY SAD HEART
for Percussion Quartet and Track
Robert Honstein
2025
Full Score
FOR PERUSAL USE ONLY
FOR PERUSAL USE ONLY
Duration ~9 minutes
Instruments
Marimba (5 octave)
Vibraphone
Glockenspiel
Percussion
4 Templeblocks
Wood plank or Woodblock (pitched in middle of Templeblock range)
Bass Drum
4 Whirly Tubes, tuned to C#
Note
Yet in my sad heart for percussion quartet and track draws inspiration from the opening of Chopin’s Prelude No. 8 in F sharp Minor. The title comes from pianist Alfred Cortot’s vivid description of the prelude: “The snow falls, the wind screams, and the storm rages; yet in my sad heart, the tempest is the worst to behold.”
Chopin’s Prelude, marked Molto agitato, is a powerful and technically demanding work. It features a continuous flow of thirty-second notes in the right hand against triplet sixteenths in the left, creating a tempestuous, virtuosic soundscape. Within this intricate polyrhythm, a melancholic melody emerges, giving voice to the “sad heart” described by Cortot.
My piece, Yet in my sad heart, offers a hazy, dream-like reinterpretation of the Chopin. Fragments of the Prelude arise from the keyboard percussion instruments, slowed down and stretched out against long, sustained synth tones. Meanwhile, as the music shifts into different key areas, the same four chords that began the Chopin, slowly cycle in the background. We stay in this space, a web of percussion, long synth chords and pulsating rhythms, until eventually a delicate cloud of piano arpeggiations in the track take over, slowly enveloping the live musicians. Finally, the piece culminates in a stream-of-consciousness soundscape of swirling, ghostly tones mixed with real world audio samples, eerily concluding this strange, Chopin-inspired fever dream.
Yet in My Sad Heart was commissioned by The Up:Strike Project, Dr. Matthew Lau & Karen Yu, directors. It was premiered on Saturday, June 8, 2025 at the Sheung Wan Civic Centre Theater, Hong Kong by the Up:Strike Project, featuring Matthew Lau, Karen Yu, Samuel Chan, and Bevis Ng.
FOR PERUSAL USE ONLY
Technical Note
This piece requires the quartet play with a click track alongside the playback track. The composer can provide audio files for this. If possible, the ensemble should be lightly amplified so that the acoustic sound blends well with the playback track. A suggested minimum set up includes:
Laptop Interface
Microphones to amplify acoustic ensemble
PA system and mixer to route all audio
Headphones and headphone mixer for click
Whirly tubes are tuned to C#, ideally C#4 but any octave is ok.
There are strong bass frequencies in the piece. It sounds really good when the amplification supports that!
Performance Note
Dynamics:
This piece is a slow burn, with textures that are pretty much unchanging, or slowly changing over the span of many measures. Think of the piece in four large chunks: mm.1-46, mm.47-95, mm.96-128, and mm.129 to the end. Each chunk should have a gradual increase in the overall dynamic. There are detailed dynamics throughout the piece, which communicate dynamics at the gestural or phrase level. On top of that please also try and bring out dynamics at the larger sectional level as welll. A good approach would be for mm.1-46 to go from very quiet to about forte, and then mm.47-95 can go from about mf to ff, mm.96-128 can go from about mf to fff and the final section, mm.129 to the end, is a gradual decrescendo.
Accents:
Regardless of the dynamic level the accents are meant to indicate notes that should pop out of the texture. Even in a quiet overall dynamic please try and exaggerat the accents so all accented notes clearly pop from the texture.
Balance with track:
The acoustic instruments should balance fairly evenly with the track throughout the piece.
FOR PERUSAL USE ONLY
Robert Honstein (2025)
Dynamics for Whirly Tubes: As dynamics get louder, spin tube faster so as to access
harmonics. When dynamics gets softer, do the opposite
Dynamics for Whirly Tubes: As dynamics get louder, spin tube faster so as to access higher harmonics. When dynamics gets softer, do the opposite
TUBE Dynamics for Whirly Tubes: As dynamics get louder, spin tube faster so as to access higher harmonics. When dynamics gets softer, do the opposite
Dynamics for Whirly Tubes: As dynamics get louder, spin tube faster so as to access higher harmonics. When dynamics gets softer, do the opposite