I recently had the incredible opportunity of writing for the CLUTCH New Music Concert in mid-October, which featured works from composition students at the University of Texas at Austin. My composition— a string quartet entitled “To Have Lived a Life” was a reflection on the carefree nature of life and the cold impersonality of terminal illness.
The piece begins with a nostalgic waltz that I initially came up with over the summer while walking along the Charles River outside of Boston. I was taking a walk to clear my head after writing medical school application essays, and for a while, it seemed that all the stress of writing had melted away. I walked along the river for miles until I found myself walking along the streets of Brookline, humming to myself without a care in the world. This waltz section was also inspired by a patient I once met who described her life as very “hum-drum”—she ran a family corner store for almost all her life and surrounded herself with her dear family and friends. Almost every time I visited her, I encountered one of her friends or relatives and we spent hours talking about her joyous life. It was so clear to me that my patient was loved by all in her community, and I could only imagine how devastating it was for them to hear of the sudden decline in her health.
The rest of the piece is inspired by her story. The waltz theme ambles along for a while, and the listener almost feels like that is the entire story. But then, at around 2:20, chaos begins to unfold. Up until now, the whole piece remains in one key, but here, the music transitions from F major to C# minor—from something familiar into something foreign and unknown. The music itself is upended. Glimpses of the original music pass by, serving as a remembrance of the familiar “hum-drum” before the descent of illness. And as it is was in my patient’s life, the transition is sudden and distant.
The next scene of the piece (starting at 2:45) is a sonic sketch of my last moments with my patient. After months of illness, my patient’s family could no longer afford to have her in a nursing home, so the family took turns taking care of her at home. Her living room became an ICU. I visited her here days before she passed away, and I will never forget those moments with her. The news blasted in the background on a small television screen, and while listening to someone read the headlines about unrest in the Middle East, I watched as my patient suffered. I felt that the cold impersonality of the news headlines was essential to recreating the scene in music. And so, in my composition, BBC world news plays in the background as the strings play complex chords, signaling the agony I felt watching her die in her own home.
Very easily, the piece could have ended there, with her passing away as a somber reminder of the finality of death. But instead, the piece makes a return into the familiar, culminating in a loud and brilliant restatement of the waltz—this time as a celebration of the life she lived and the people she held dear. It was so easy to spiral into the grief of her death and ignore the gift of her life. And I think that was the most important realization I wanted to capture in this piece.
Take a listen below and let me know what you think! I am incredibly grateful to my fellow orchestra members for bringing this piece to life, and to Dr. Podgorsek, the composition faculty, and the CLUTCH committee for putting together a wonderful concert!
To Have Lived a Life by Abhi Rao is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.