I composed the piece “Heavy Water” between the months of October and December 2019.
The piece was written as a tribute to the period in my life, during which I served as a combat soldier and was sent on a mission to guard a nuclear power plant.Whilst guarding the nuclear power plant, I researched the subject of nuclear production and came across the term “heavy water”. The term describes water with a different chemical compound from the water we use, and this special water plays an important role in the nuclear production process.
To the naked eye, heavy water looks exactly the same as normal water. It is transparent like normal water, has the same fluidity, but the density of the substance is different. In the same way the string quartet in this piece is not a normal quartet, but rather a low strings quartet consisting of two celli. In the piece I tried to convey musically the similarities and differences between heavy water and normal water. In addition, I attempted to describe the process of creating heavy water in musical terms and expression.
Heavy water is not a substance humans invented, but a substance which exists in nature. Every drop of normal water contains several molecules of heavy water. In order to separate the heavy water molecules from the normal water, they must be boiled and distilled. This idea of boiling and distilling is the non-musical idea, which served as a guide during my composition process.