Czernowin, ChayaTutschku, HansHaven, Jonah Nuoja Luo2026-07-0720262026-05-112026Haven, Jonah Nuoja Luo. 2026. On the Skin of Grief. Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.32697637https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/42744127Before beginning my studies at Harvard, my music found a special interest in immense effort: persistent and audible circular breathing, prolonged altissimo passages requiring a large dose of luck, momentums accelerating to tempos just out of reach—music on the threshold of playability. This effort which was not concerned with the expression of failure but rather genuine and often desperate striving emulated an aspect of my experience with grief and complex PTSD: the seemingly endless endeavor to remove oneself from pain. During the six years of my Ph.D., although my grief began to change, I continued to contend with it as if it were as urgent as it once was. I began to wear this emotion as a protective skin, simultaneously exploiting its power and relegating my position as its expresser from the core to the exterior. I wrote 17 works during my time at Harvard, seven of which are included in this portfolio. One of the first pieces from this period, was (2021), directly questions a confusing lack of urgency I felt when approaching grief during the isolation of lockdown. The intense emotions which had propelled my music for so long seemed to have vanished. A new kind of effort emerged from this fallout: without as many previously-explored extreme techniques, the intimate yet directionless pieces of debris that formed the material of the piece found their identity within questioning, within not knowing. At the time, however, I was disheartened and not ready to recognize this other form of vitality; I was convinced that music concerning grief should always sound as urgent or as absolute as it did in my earlier works. This belief continued in the works cells mold me, eleven years of pleasure, and i view it as a smooth body from 2022, without you, bear, too, ripen from 2023, and the kill harness from 2024. With the exception of the second half of eleven years of pleasure in which mournful piano chords overtake the foreground, these pieces attempt to bring back the kind of immense effort that emulated my grief. Technically speaking, this effort persists throughout all of these works, but I now consider it as having transformed from an endeavor to escape pain to an endeavor to once again feel this pain’s urgency. The result is, in effect, an emulation of urgency itself. being-sent (2023) traces the collapse of an ecosystem, specifically the ecosystem of a linked microbiome between beings. Microtonal shadows of a single note, sung and bowed, expand into an hour-long narrative involving myself as a child, a guide, her death, and its aftermath. Near the end of the piece, the double bass detaches from the viola and cello into its own time. While the music between all three parts remains similar, the subtle shift disclosed a novel, grounded expression of grief’s quiet, which, unlike with was, I was readily able to accept at the time. Within this work, deeply inspired by Éliane Radigue’s Trilogie de la Mort, I was able to find, if only momentarily, a long-awaited peace, a layer of the skin of grief shed in the process. Grief was and still is a driving force behind why I compose. While this critique of my creative approach during this time relies heavily on hindsight, it has helped me reach a turning point in my music—a moment to acknowledge the power, danger, and, most importantly, the subjectivity of grief. In writing these pieces, I have learned an outwardly self-evident yet personally invaluable lesson: the honest expression of grief, like grief itself, endlessly mutates. The ever-changing natures of both necessitate a mutual deep listening and deep respect. I move forward with this at heart.application/pdfenCompositionMusicMusical compositionThesis or Dissertation2026-07-070009-0002-9991-1156