Performed by Gwyneth Thomson, Maxime Despax and Bryan Lu (cello).

I wrote La Fille sur l’Eau for the birth of my second child, Anna. It is a tribute to the fragility of life, its transcendental beauty, and the overwhelming fear of the unknown.

It is intended to portray a continuum from “the fear of trying,” as the girl considers the water and the unknown it represents, to her eventual fusion with the water, musically shown in a recurrent figure that continuously changes in order to “give birth” to a classical-type theme at the viola (bar 225). Her methodic curiosity will drive her to love what she does not understand at first as she perceives her beauty in the water and discovers her image in its reflection.

View the score here.

Copyright © 2016, F P Ubertelli.