As the title of the piece says, the dark and intimidating atmosphere is immediately set up from the very beginning of the piece. The darkness is expressed by wavy trills and fast notes from both viola and piano along with mysterious harmonies. Moreover, dynamics and unique instrumental techniques also help to convey the spooky darkness.

 

Within the range of the darkness, there is whole individual color palette which portrays different aspects of the murkiness. The different colors, in other words, the different aspects of the murkiness, are later introduced as second and third themes. If the first theme has a sense of recklessness and spookiness in it, the second theme is more melodic and stationary. To describe the second theme a bit deeper, it mostly consists of same notes, but in very diverse rhythms. The melody of the second theme itself has some influences from Korean traditional music, however, the piano accompaniment keeps the music stays in the category of gloominess. The third theme, contrastingly, is calm and it has a feeling of sound coming from afar. Very quiet, and has soft colors in it. Imagine you are covered with blackness where you will not be able to see anything. You might feel frightened, terrified, and maybe panicking. For a while, you might be running around to find a way to escape from where you are, but the only thing that comes back to you is pitch-black dark. This piece describes the situation of being in a complete dark. However, it also portrays feelings in the other sides of terrified and afraid which you might not expect to feel.