In some cases, the title of a piece comes to me first, without any sound or strictly musical idea. Sometimes the feeling connected to such a word or combination of words is so strong that my intuition presses upon my heart that there is a meaning behind these words, and with that, a composition; a musical world. With T h rou gh A b sence, that was the case.

As the internet has been generous enough to tell me, a beautiful discovery in the etymology of the word t h rou gh is that it likely stems from the Pre-Germanic : *trh₂(h₃)kʷ- (do not ask me how to pronounce this, but doesn ’t it look fascinating?). This compound, as they call it, is rooted in the Proto-Indo-European elements *terh₂- (“to cross ”) and *h₃ekʷ – (“to see ”). So, to see across something, perhaps? Then there is the word, ab sence, of course coming from latin ab (off, away from) and esse (to be).

The title of this piece then seems to find its essence in the seeming friction between the meaning of these two definitions. Where absence implies a void, a state of being missing or away, through embodies the exact opposite: an active movement, a deliberate act of crossing over or seeing across a threshold.

A bridge between two “somethings. ”

The act of overcoming, of letting go, is rooted in something mystical—mystical in the sense of that which can not be fully grasped. This piece consists of attempts to reunite that which is separate, of purposeful movements finding a presence in a “through,” a being in motion. Maybe, it is at the intersection of t h at where beauty can be found. A moment in which that what cannot be grasped shows the nature of its face and vanishes before we can truly understand.