On July 14, 2023, James Lee III’s new work String Quartet No. 3, “Untranslatable” premieres at the Ravinia Festival. The 21-minute work will be performed by Steans Music Institute Fellows. The afternoon concert will take place at Bennett Gordon Hall.
Lee shares some insight into this new work. “String Quartet No. 3 ‘Untranslatable’ is inspired by my interest in foreign languages and other cultures and is composed in five movements. Each movement contains only one word in the title and that word (except for the last movement) poses challenges for a clear and concise definition in English. In movement one, the word ‘Nhujuanya’ is a Nigerian Igbo word that means ‘The anguish that comes with a great disappointment or lost hope.’ Movement two, ‘Iktsuarpok,’ is [an Inuit word that means] when ‘You know that feeling when you’re waiting for someone to arrive, and you feel so impatient that you keep checking the door to see if they’re here yet?’ Sometimes, it’s a friend, and sometimes it’s something you’ve ordered and you just can’t wait for it to be delivered! It’s just perfect to describe that heady impatient feeling of waiting for something to arrive!”
He continues. “The third movement is the centerpiece of the quartet and bears the title ‘Chesed.’ Chesed, like many Hebrew words, does not translate precisely into English. The word means more than simply ‘kindness.’ Often translated as ‘loving-kindness,’ chesed means giving oneself fully, with love and compassion. The fourth movement, ‘Saudade,’ [is a Portugugese word that means] ‘the feeling of longing for an absent something or someone that you love but might never return.’ There’s nostalgia, melancholy, love, happiness, sadness, hope, emptiness, and desire – all the feelings of a lifetime in one word! The fifth and final movement, ‘Elation,’ expresses happiness, exhilaration, joy, joyousness, delight, glee, excitement, animation, jubilation, exultation, ecstasy, euphoria, bliss, rapture, rhapsody, rhapsodies, transport(s), cloud nine, heaven, paradise, and the seventh heaven. My new string quartet seeks to communicate and translate the meaning of these foreign words through the universal language of music.”