PART II. DEATH SPIRAL

IV. Intermezzo “Aria del destino” (B♭ Major)

In the eye of the storm, a heavenly mezzo-soprano voice emerges—a fleeting Urlicht borrowed from Mahler’s Resurrection, its golden B♭ major warmth promising just as much. Yet this light is masked by cruel foreshadowing. The aria was originally conceived as a mirror to Aybar’s inner voice, a nostalgic reflection on his first year of chamber music: innocent memories of childhood entwined with regret for overlooking a Japanese-Quebécoise violist’s genuine interest in favour of the ensemble’s aloof pianist. Years later, as university auditions loom, the music shifts to a steady F♯ minor march—a theme co-composed with the violist—as Aybar debates rekindling their connection. Trembling G♭ major hope implodes into E♭ minor dissonance, sharpening into a “death chord” Aybar describes as “every note of the insen scale colliding.” This Japanese pentatonic scale's traditional serenity becomes perverted into a scream of unresolved minor seconds—a warning of the cruel Fate to come. This aria morphs into a broader indictment of Aybar’s paralyzing inaction, as history was doomed to repeat itself. Originally a nod to the violist’s heritage, the insen scale twists like a knife and becomes an inadvertent allusion to Madama Butterfly—an opera Aybar hoped to use as the romantic backdrop for a date with a mezzo-soprano in his university years. Yet, in his months-long hesitation, he discovered her heart had already become a stage occupied by another, and a trio—composed hastily yet too late—joins this aria in taunting Aybar’s own Puccinian tragedy. By the symphony’s publication, Aybar finds himself rejected by half of his school’s mezzo-sopranos—a statistical absurdity that amplifies the aria’s cruel twist. The mezzo-soprano, once a mirror to his inner voice grieving regret, now disunites to mock him herself. Her voice warps from solace to sneer, a haunting reminder that love, like music, demands timing. A missed cue, a rest too long, a fermata held past its breath—and the moment is gone. Forever.

V. Finale. Tema con variazioni “The Violist” (F♯ Minor)

In the cyclical form of theme and variations, Aybar spirals into existential futility. A backstage clarinet’s fragile theme, answered by a distant viola, becomes a 50-minute odyssey of hope and despair. Variations destined for nowhere trundle through old themes shared by the violist, Duolingo chimes (for McGill-motivated French lessons), ciphered phone numbers, and a timpani heartbeat marking each day of ghosting and missed connection. After an explosion of delusional euphoria, the Mahler Hammer finally strikes us into a cataclysmic F# minor chord—as Aybar’s university audition successes heavily contrast from his humiliating confession and rejection the day before—a testament to the cruel arithmetic of existence. Genius may conquer art, but it cannot outcalculate the heart’s frail algebra. In this spirit, the choir's nihilistic entrance, echoing Shakespeare's yearnings for his “dark lady” and Verlaine's own societal angst, succumbs to love’s futility in a final appearance of the “death chord,” where the symphony’s uneasy coda mirrors Aybar’s poignant conclusion: “Had I channeled my romantic efforts into music, I might have written 60 symphonies by now,” in a final resignation to embracing music as his only true love.

The five-movement structure of Aybar's Second Symphony culminates in his experience of five simultaneous and paradoxically inescapable facets of self-loathing: regret festering in the paralysis of inaction (the violist’s unanswered emails), yet disbelief for having faith in hope's cruel mirages when action is taken (being shoved overboard by the violinist into the proverbial sea of hopelessness), disgust for obsessiveness and its collateral damage (the cellist’s shattered career), condemnation for the immorality of persistent longing (dreams of the taken mezzo-soprano), and overarching guilt for indulging personal anguish while Gaza burns and homeless voices cry outside Aybar's very conservatory—true human suffering. This is not a symphony of catharsis, but a grotesque mirror. In the end, the music screams what Aybar cannot: love’s pursuit is not just futile, but fraudulent, a bourgeois distraction from a world aflame. The true tragedy? Even as Aybar sets off to explore every facet of the human condition, in his obsessiveness he fails to be human himself. He howls his doomed lineage alongside Tchaikovsky's and Mahler's ghosts—a “lone wolf” Romantic in a digital age, stuck in a generation that is force-fed algorithmic romance yet still gnawing at the same primal trap: society’s narcissistic “scroll” of height charts, beauty standards, misogynistic norms, racial bias and transactional motivations. The symphony's grandeur—stratospheric glissandi, brutalist brass, uselessly difficult flourishes and runs—is a modern parody of Romantic triumph, while its cyclical structure admits defeat. By weaponizing music with extreme dynamics, punishing registers and inordinately awkward keys, Aybar's Second Symphony mocks its own grandiosity in a monument to failure—his defiant ode to the human condition.