Abstract:
The Two Trees is a fifteen-minute musical composition for orchestra. Inspired by
William Butler Yeats' poem of the same name, the piece depicts the images described by
Yeats' poetic narrative through a double theme and variations form consisting of two
contrasting themes that are related, one ascending and one descending. Each theme
represents one of the two contrasting sections of the poem and is followed by a set of five
variations for a total of ten. Since the rhyme scheme of each section of the poem is divided
into five phrases of four lines, each musical variation corresponds to four lines of text.