String Quartet No. 11 'Nox: Tenebrae Lucis'

‘Don't blame the darkness for the shadows. They are caused by light.’

• From Excess of Being by Lera Auerbach

String Quartet No. 11
Nox: Tenebrae Lucis
Night: Darkness of Light

‘Nox: Tenebrae Lucis (‘Night: Darkness of Light’) is the second in a cycle of four string quartets which I hope to complete.
The circular passage through evening, night, dawn, and day has held deep-seated symbolism throughout human history. It echoes the transient nature of life and the dance between beginnings and ends, the known and unknown.
Darkness, feared and revered, embodies the unseen, the unexplored, and the hidden nature of both the external world and the internal realms of the human psyche. This abstract musical work is perhaps my own reflection – a contemplation of night’s duality: it conceals and yet reveals. Within the mystery of sleep and dreams, what remains invisible in waking life may acquire a presence of its own.
Night, not as a void of absence, but as a space rich with revelation and seductive beauty.
The duality of light and darkness, and their symbiotic relationship, resonate through our collective conscious and unconscious. The mystical interplay between visibility and obscurity, presence and absence, revelation and concealment. Darkness not as the absence of light but as its canvas.
‘I dream, then dissect this dream into sounds, translate the sounds into symbols,
which can resurrect the dream. Bound to the page, it's only a shadow of itself, but only by looking at shadows, we are not blinded by light.’
– From Excess of Being by Lera Auerbach