Surviving by Firelight

The first ideas for this piece's middle section came to me while watching a sepia silent film called "Broken Blossoms" about an abused girl in the gritty inner city of London.  The image of figures huddling around a fireplace stuck with me, as did the rich, dark, string parts that accented the flickers of the grainy film.  Later, I paired my initial idea with a more hopeful melody and wrote "Surviving by Firelight."