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Programme Note

Composer’s Note:

Eagle at Sunrise is a modest 7-8 minute work, which features the cello, largely in the higher, registers. The music is immediate, bold, colorful and dramatic. The work celebrates the passionate sound of the strings and is built from a tightly wrought harmonic scheme and its resultant counterpoint.

The spirit of modernity means: contingency — the transitory, the fugitive, the unexpected...modernism implies inward turning and outward reaching — it has both centripetal and centrifugal force...modernism is defined by insatiable hope.

The spirit of America, symbolized by the eagle, our national bird, at sunrise is an image of hope and implicit faith in the inevitability of new beginnings and ardent dreams.

Eagle at Sunrise for string quartet was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation for the Ying String Quartet. The work was premiered in January 2002. The work is dedicated to the memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky and to the members of the Ying String Quartet with admiration and gratitude.
This is movement #1 of Sun Threads.

Sun Threads
Duration: 39'
for string quartet

Eagle at Sunrise — duration: 7'
Invocations — duration: 9'
Fugitive Star — duration: 9'
Rise Chanting — duration: 13'

— Augusta Read Thomas