Pas de deux: Dancing at the End of Loss

1. Source of inspiration

I’ve released my new solo piano piece, “Pas de deux.”

This work was composed based on a story that suddenly came to my mind one day.

***

They were once ballet dancers who performed pas de deux together.On stage, where their breaths aligned perfectly, they always moved as one.

But one day, the wife died in a sudden accident. The husband could no longer dance after losing her.

Overwhelmed by grief, he dug up her body from the grave, brought her home, and lived beside her. He played music, spoke to her, and danced pas de deux alone with her.

That was when the dreams began.

In his dreams, the wife said nothing—she only cried. She didn’t dance, and she didn’t take his hand. Her sorrow deepened day by day.

Eventually, the man understood: He wasn’t holding on to her out of love, but out of fear.

So he returned to her grave and buried her again.

That night, she appeared in his dream once more. But this time, she wasn’t crying. She smiled silently and reached out her hand.

Music began to play, and the two danced pas de deux—perfectly, just as they had when she was alive.

When morning came, the man knew. He had finally let her go. And love—real love—could only continue in dreams.

***

“Pas de deux” expresses the emotional journey of this man in musical form:

the turmoil of losing the woman he once danced with on stage,

the anguish of clinging to her memory,

and the quiet acceptance that ultimately allows him to meet her again—

only in a dream—where they dance their final pas de deux.

2. Brief explanation of the musical idea

(1)

The piece opens doloroso e sognante (sad and dreamy).

The main theme appears in the right hand, accompanied by a distinctive sixteenth-note motif that carries the music with a sense of unity from beginning to end.

This section reflects the image of the man and his wife dancing ballet together.

A quiet sadness permeates the beautiful melody, subtly foreshadowing the tragedy that awaits them.

(2)

The opening theme returns within a harmonically somber atmosphere, deepening the sense of melancholy.

Although the man and his wife are still depicted dancing ballet together on stage, the music gradually darkens. As the theme evolves in a more dramatic manner, an ominous tension begins to rise.

At 00:34, the musical narrative reaches its first climax, hinting at the moment of the wife’s fatal accident. By developing the melody through a rising scale to heighten tension, the music conveys the overwhelming grief and confusion building inside the man as he loses her.

(3)

This passage captures the profound loss and sorrow the man faces after his wife’s death.

The main theme, first introduced at the beginning, reappears unchanged; yet in the transformed reality he now inhabits, the sadness embedded within its major-key melody becomes even more piercingly clear.

The subtle use of non legato—slightly detached notes that fall out of step with the flow of emotion—suggests that the man’s inner sense of reason is beginning to waver under the weight of his overwhelming grief.

(4)

In this section, the man's emotions surface as he becomes consumed by grief and gradually loses his grasp on reality. It is performed Lento e soave, un poco malinconico—slowly and gently, with a faint touch of melancholy.

Unable to bear the pain of losing his wife—and unable to dance again after her death—he eventually exhumes her body and brings her home, choosing to live with her once more.

The pas de deux he dances while holding her lifeless body is a duet in form only; in truth, it is a dance carried out entirely alone.

The right hand’s nine-note arpeggio figure intertwines with a five-note-like melodic pattern in the left hand, creating an uncanny and disoriented atmosphere.

Through this subtle rhythmic misalignment, the music portrays the man's descent into a dreamlike, unreal world—a place shaped by his grief, where reason slips away and longing takes over.

(5)

This section depicts the moment when the man's wife appears in his dream, just as he is losing himself in madness born of grief.

She appears as if alive, yet sheds only silent tears—prompting the man to realize that his actions were not born of love, but of misguided obsession.

Having finally decided to accept their farewell, he returns her body to the grave. In the dreams that follow, she reappears with a gentle smile and reaches out her hand to him.

The melody in this passage is newly crafted using the scale tones of the main theme, expressing the reconciliation and reunion that become possible only after he lets go of his attachment.

At 00:26, the music rises sharply in intensity, capturing the man’s complex emotions as he resolves to accept his loss. This leads into the musical climax that accompanies the moment when, at last, the man and his wife dance their final pas de deux together in his dream.

(6)

Vivace appassionato (fast and passionate)

As the meter shifts to 3/8, the piece enters a clear waltz character, building toward the work’s overall climax.

In his dream, the man dances an intense pas de deux with his wife.

Joy, love, sorrow, regret, and the ache of loss—every emotion he had long suppressed surges within him all at once.

The main theme reappears almost unchanged, now set against an urgent waltz rhythm and developed with greater lyricism.

Through this, the music dramatically portrays a romantic yet tragic pas de deux—a dance that can exist only within the realm of dreams.

(7)

Andantino sognante (at a slightly walking pace, dreamlike)

In this final section, the music gradually subsides, revealing the man’s inner transformation as he finally accepts his loss after the passionate pas de deux.

The main motif returns quietly over shifting harmonies, gently reflecting his state of mind—one that no longer clings, no longer struggles to hold on.

Toward the end, the piece fades smorzando, dissolving slowly into silence and closing the story with an echo that lingers far longer than the sound itself.

3. Album art

Pas de deux, 3 (nathalie straseele)

For the album art of this piece, I selected a work by the remarkable French painter Nathalie Straseele.

The details of the artwork are as follows.

Album art:

Pas de deux, 3

Acrylique sur toile

nathalie straseele

"Je m'intéresse à nos mouvements intérieurs."
(I am drawn to the inner movements of the human psyche.)
-nathalie straseele 

Website: www.nathalie-straseele.com

I really appreciate her permission to use her wonderful artwork as the album art, which fits so perfectly with my piece "Pas de deux".

4. sound engineering

For this piece, I used the Garritan CFX Concert Grand – Solo Piano 1 as the virtual instrument.

(My thanks to HyungMook Kim, who kindly gifted me this instrument a few months ago.^^)

Because I envisioned the piece as having a rather classical character, my goal was to shape a sound that carried a certain weight and depth throughout the production process.

Here is the MIDI screen showing the entire piece as it was fully recorded, with every note captured.

Originally, there were musical ideas filling the mid-range area in the center, but they proved especially difficult to control due to unwanted noise. In the end, I decided to remove those passages entirely.The released version of the track is the one with those lines deleted. It was disappointing, of course, but I also feel that the overall structure became cleaner and the musical flow less loose as a result.

As for the general workflow, I first performed and recorded the piece myself, then meticulously refined every note—its velocity, touch, and rhythm—with extreme precision. My goal was to make the performance sound as natural and beautiful as possible.

Noise control—something I always struggle with—was, as expected, one of the most difficult parts of this project.

As shown in the image above, I prepared more than twenty different virtual-instrument presets and painstakingly replaced any notes from the original recording that sounded unnatural or unattractive. It was a process of picking out imperfections one by one, almost like hunting down every last insect.

I worked with extreme delicacy and sensitivity, and during this stage I placed greater weight on controlling noise than on preserving the beauty of the sound itself. Even if the musical expression had to be softened slightly, I wanted to reduce any noise that might distract the listener to the absolute minimum.

This is usually the point where I end up yelling at my computer or hitting the desk in frustration. This stage alone often takes several weeks.

If I could somehow escape from this part of the workflow, I’m convinced I could release beautiful music every five days. But under the current system, I’ve ended up releasing roughly one piece per quarter. It’s incredibly frustrating.

Since I began working on this piece in late October and released it in early December, it took a little over a month to complete.

In fact, before starting this composition, I had been working on another project—one that I spent nearly two months trying to control noise on, only to abandon it in the end. The frustration from that failure became a powerful motivation for completing this piece, so in a way, Pas de deux was created over the course of more than three months.

I loved the main theme melody—the one that appears at the very beginning—from the moment it came to me. Because of that, the process of imagining the musical ideas that would follow was genuinely joyful.

Rather than trying to devise beautiful phrases through rational thought, I sat at the piano and kept playing, seeking a state of musical immersion. Once I entered that state, I felt my musical soul becoming one with the ideas forming in real time. I tried to restrain cold logic as much as possible and let my emotions lead the way—enjoying every moment when musical feeling erupted from within and set my whole body on fire.

Breathless, I allowed the ideas pouring out of my musical spirit to flow directly through my fingertips, cascading across the keys in vivid, spontaneous bursts. In this deeply improvised and intensely emotional manner, the piece came into being.

5. Preview of the finale and next work

The process of composing a piece and bringing the recording to completion is always painful. There is certainly a thrill in creation, but achieving a level of quality that allows a work to be shared with the world requires exhausting effort and relentless persistence.

While working on this piece, I yelled a lot, slammed my desk more times than I can count, and often ended up screaming in frustration. There were moments when anger surged so strongly that I found myself breathless, and on days when I shouted too loudly, my dog Somi—who was in the living room—would jump up in alarm and start barking.

And yet, despite all this suffering, I continue because the joy of creation occasionally returns. The exhilaration of a beautiful idea suddenly descending as if from the sky, the happiness I feel when a phrase I’ve written unexpectedly sounds breathtaking in the midst of grueling sound work—these moments enrich my inner world so deeply that I cannot let go of this path.

In fact, while working on this piece, an idea for an entirely different work suddenly came to me, and I have already completed the score for that new piece. I feel the greatest joy in moments like this—when I can focus purely on musical ideas without worrying about sound design or audio quality, when I can think only about the music itself. I expect I’ll be spending the next few weeks working on that piece as well.

It is a bright, étude-like work—its patterns resemble an étude, yet its fairy-tale melody and luminous, romantic harmonies make it feel like a small, unique étude of my own.

Here is a short, sketch-style performance—a hint of the next piece.