Heart of a Tern

A submission to the Prelude Young Composers Competition, this difficult, compact string quartet chronicles a full flight of the Arctic Tern in the span of four minutes. Notable for having the longest migration cycle in the whole Animal Kingdom, the Arctic tern takes flight from its breeding grounds in the Arctic to its wintering grounds in Antarctic each year, ensuring each tern an endless summer and the most daylight exposure for any animal on the planet–– for the price of 50,000 miles annually. 

This fact made me think about humanity's own desire to explore and conquer; these days, I don’t think our need to wander comes from any sort of material necessity. We hike, we sail, and we fly because it’s what our ancestors were made to do, and that instinct to travel thousands of miles never left us. In a sense, our hearts of wanderlust is no different from those of seabirds.