The Tragedy of Marguerite

Commissioned by Pavlina Dokovska for the Mannes Sounds Festival's "Imagining Faust" concert. Performed by Vashawn Arora (Oboe), Adie Baban (Violin), Hannah Sohn (Cello), & Gyorgy Lekov (Piano) in April 2023.

Rather than programmatically following the sequence of events in Marguerite's story in J.W. Goethe's Faust, I have chosen to depict the struggle between her deep moral conscience and the overwhelming guilt and despair that consumes her. Consequently, the motivic material and structure are not meant to represent the different characters in her story but rather are symbolic representations of the forces of innocence and suffering, whose conflict shows the ease with which purity can be corrupted by the darker forces of the world. Whereas Faust seeks knowledge and experience at any cost, The Tragedy of Marguerite is meant as a reminder of the human toll of such pursuits.