Adieu provokes reflection on the transience of experience by expressing feelings of separation and bereavement. This is accomplished through the use of long-held chords with
microtonal fluctuations and gestures of interrupted movement—unfinished
cadences, abrupt changes in the sound, and so on. "The musicians must be able to experience deeply, and form into notes, the sense of closeness to death that vibrates in this music". The work is divided into sections proportioned according to the
Fibonacci numbers from 1 to 144. The main material consists of long-drawn out, static or slowly changing sound expanses, interrupted at intervals by general pauses and five short, unfinished traditional tonal cadences, reminiscent of
Mozart. These broken-off cadence fragments open and close
Adieu, and divide the whole into four large sections of 144 time units each. The second and fourth of these main sections are subdivided by the pauses, resulting in a total of eight subsections, with durations of 144, 55 + 89, 144, and 34 + 21 + 34, + 55 units. These are then subdivided further into smaller measures. Each Fibonacci duration is associated throughout the composition with a particular
articulation type. The value 13, for example, is associated with
trills. However, when such a value is also a part of a larger one, e.g., when a section of 34 units is divided 13 + 21, the shorter section takes on in addition the character associated with 34, which is repetition of notes. On the other hand, where 13 combines with 8 to form a larger section of 21 units, the 13 bar will take on in addition to trills the character associated with 21, which is
crescendo. ==Discography==