Trio for Oboe/English Horn, Viola, and Piano
Daixuan Ai 

Music has long been used to comment on humanity’s quest for equality, so Daixuan Ai looked to a historical model for inspiration — Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which portrays a struggle, fraught with despair, eventually climaxing in the triumph of the democratic ideals of freedom and equality. Ai was inspired by this compositional narrative and by Beethoven’s use of symbolic motives, such as depicting “all men are equal” with repeated, equal notes.

Ai’s trio is set in two movements, the first of which is retrospective. It starts with a D Minor arpeggio and a theme with repeated notes, references to the opening of Beethoven’s Ninth. The musical style hints of romanticism, and she intentionally incorporates historic techniques like fugal writing to symbolize the centuries over which people have sturggled for equality.

The second movement, more contemporary in its musical language and form, expresses the mix of Ai’s emotions about recent news stories on the back-and-forth struggles for racial and gender equality. It begins with a sense of deep unrest, the unpredictable viola pizzicato chasing and almost fighting the piano motives, while the english horn plays lamenting solo passages. A brief climax — almost folklike in character, as in Beethoven’s symphony — represents celebration for what has been achieved, but dissonance and irregular phrasing quickly undermine the sense of security. The movement ends with an ambiguous mixture of modes, expressing the uncertainty of the future.