For contemporary Japanese composer Takashi Yoshimatsu, birds symbolize many things: messengers on a divine mission, for instance, and gateways to viewing the wonder and erosion of the natural world. Describing “And Birds Are Still…,” the composer wrote, “it is a simple piece in the form of a short, piecemeal song that becomes a faint melody which then develops into a melancholic recollection of a memory of long ago, before blending back into its original piecemeal form, and finally fading away.”