top of page

The Eyes Outlast the Tears (2024)

for symphony orchestra

The Eyes Outlast the Tears_Seyoung OhSeyoung Oh
00:00 / 07:53

 This piece is largely based on my personal emotional journey after closing a relationship, reflecting the experience through the lens of T. S Eliot’s poem ‘Eyes that I saw in tears’. 

​

 The main emotion I wanted to express through music was an emotional conflict after the parting. The line “I see the eyes but not the tears” and “The eyes outlast a little while, a little while outlast the tears” suggested to me the division of space between the space where one has to go through the grief by oneself (in their private space) and the space where they re-encounter in public - where the eyes don’t show (or can’t show) the ‘tears’. I thought this emotional responsibility or an emotional conflict could be effectively delivered through sound. 

​

 Musically, I also explored textural exploration and expansion through writing this piece where I kept the overall textures but focusing on different angles of the texture like observing different corners of the same object.

​

In overall, the piece roughly follows the poem and its emotional trajectory.

bottom of page