Kintsugi is a Japanese art form which involves repairing broken pottery. Lacquer, most often of gold, is used to join the pieces together, to emphasize the cracks, not to hide them. The exquisite results show us that beauty in art – and, by extension, composure in our lives – can be found precisely by embracing imperfection and fragmentation.  

For a long time, I have been making musical forms out of fragments, and in my new piano quintet, there are thirteen short movements, which run into each other. There are a number of external musical references, including a Yiddish song, baroque textures and a distant waltz, which jostle with a range of other moods, from gentle to pained. 

But there is also one unchanging harmony that recurs repeatedly, at once separating and joining the fragments, my musical equivalent of the kintsugi lacquer. I hope this harmony not only helps to create beauty and repose, but is also a kind of response to the the ancient rabbinical saying that threads its way through the titles of movements 1, 4, 8, 10 and 13. 

Movements: 

1. If I am not for myself… 
2. Burning through 
3. Fluttering
4. …who will be for me? 
5. Tender, submerged 
6. Once Again… 
7. Crying out 
8. If I am only for myself, what am I? 
9. Fleeting 
10. And if not now… 
11. Floating 
12. In Pieces 
13. …when? 

 Michael Zev Gordon ©