Music Music Composition Senior Thesis: Daniel Ang '15: “In Pursuit of Feeling”

The Amherst College Department of Music presents "In Pursuit of Feeling," an original music composition thesis by senior Daniel Ang '15 on Sunday, Feb. 8, at 3 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall. The concert is free and open to the public; seating is by general admission.

"In Pursuit of Feeling" is a seven-movement work for 16 instrumentalists dealing with the central theme of the endless quest for sincere and genuine expression in art. Starting out as a simple conversation between a few instruments, the music oscillates between immense orchestral-like outbursts, passionate solo lyricism and intimate moments of chamber music, as it struggles in its pursuit of the “perfect” expression that would fully convey the true, authentic emotions of the human psyche.

Written for a combination of strings, woodwinds, brass, piano and percussion, including a tenor saxophone, the work draws from musical influences as diverse as Mahler, Shostakovich, Schubert, Pauline Oliveros, Michael Daugherty, Michael Schelle and the gamelan music of West Java. It is Ang's largest-scale work to date, the culmination of the composer's four-year musical journey at Amherst College.


The performance features members of the local Wistaria String Quartet, musicians from the University of Massachusetts Department of Music and Dance and talented Amherst College students. Mark Swanson, director of instrumental music and music director of the Amherst College Symphony Orchestra, conducts the ensemble.