“In This Moment” originally began as a relatively simple piano piece.

I wrote it as a Valentine’s Day surprise for my wife, who was still my girlfriend at the time. I remember thinking that writing an original song for someone you love was probably not something many people actually did.

Once the piece was finished, I called her. We were in a long-distance relationship then, so I played it for her over the phone.

To my surprise, she was moved to tears.

I had not expected such a strong reaction, but that moment made me feel that the song deserved to be preserved in a more complete form. Over time, I added lyrics, developed the arrangement into something much more elaborate, and eventually even created a music video for it.

Harmonically, the original idea was actually quite simple. I had only wanted to experiment with a secondary dominant. Unexpectedly, that progression seemed to capture the feeling of longing that came with being apart.

Looking back, I later realized that part of the harmonic movement happened to share a genuine theoretical similarity with Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March”.

Perhaps the kind of blind, slightly irrational optimism that comes with being in love is a feeling shared across cultures, and, apparently, across centuries of music as well.