This is a piece that began in a Composer Practicum class I took at CCM. The idea: write for horn quartet. So, week after week, I would bring in sketches for the horn players to perform. Eventually these sketches formed one cohesive unit.

Because these were sketches, I didn’t bother giving them individual titles, so I used various emoticons and placed them in the [title] slot. They stuck.

e•mo•ti•con / iˈmōtəˌkän/ n. A series of keyed characters used especially in email to indicate an emotion, such as happiness [:-)] or sadness [:-(].

       American Heritage Dictionary

New College Edition