The Book of Mourning, Quarto III: Tala (for two pianos and two percussionists; 2018) by Sidney Marquez Boquiren published on 2018-07-05T03:44:38Z Written for the nief-norf Summer Festival 2018. Performed by Sarah Barham (piano), Georgia Mills (piano), Alex RIchard (percussion), and Devon Roulston (percussion). Premiered: Friday, 15 June 2018. Powell Recital Hall, Natalie Haslam Music Center, Univ. of Tennessee-Knoxville. The Book of Mourning, Quarto III: Tala (2018) For Two Pianos and Two Percussion Written for the 2018 nief-norf Summer Festival Tala is a multivalent Philippine (Tagalog dialect) word that, depending on pronunciation, can mean “star” (bituin), “count” (bilang), or “remembering” (paggunita). The Book of Mourning, Quarto III: Tala is constructed in three sections to reflect these three possible meanings. Tala is the third in a set of four works that dwell on grieving and mourning as a shared human experience. These four works reference various practices ranging from keening and cortege to the Tibetan bardo thodol and the Catholic Missa pro defunctis, as well as other funerary and literary texts, and recent tragedies of loss. Specifically, I wrote Tala as a response to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that resulted in the death of 17 innocent victims and brought about the rise of youth-led activism against gun violence. The main section of the work uses two sources: the names of three of the Parkland survivor-activists transformed into pitches and harmonies, and the number of victims of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 2009 translated as durations. Genre Classical