Recording Coming Soon

Duration: 15 minutes | Composed: 2023 | Commissioned by Arcadia Winds | Premiered by Arcadia Winds | World Premiere: Tempo Rubato Dec 2023

SCORE SAMPLE

“This Always Happened” is a type of fictional time travel that deals in fixed, predestined loops. Furthermore, it’s the very act of travelling through time that initiates the events being examined, or the story being observed.

When we talk about large periods of time, we most often discuss centuries: our organization of historical passage is measured by them – 19th century, 20th century, 21st century, etc. It’s also nice to think that some of us, (likely less than 0.05%) will live out an entire century, but it is at least possible, and many of us 24+ will still, likely, straddle two centuries across our lifetime.

In music, we can chase our compositions across these centuries quite easily, particularly from around 650 CE with the development of “Neumes” (found predominantly in Gregorian chant) and even more prolifically from 1000 CE with D’Arezzo’s invention of the staff. Before these landmarks though we still have strong, physical evidence of written music that dates back to Ancient Greece and Babylon.

While it’s fascinating to observe the development of music across centuries, the inspiration for this work goes one step further and traces common musical elements across millennia.

Having taken a “philosophy of time travel” class many years ago as part of my MAphil, the subject matter has finally found it’s way back to me and while I am very much fictionalizing the style present in every millennia except for 2023 CE, this piece is an imagined journey through thousands of years – both as a combination of my sound world as a composer, and with musical elements that have been observed in actual historical examples of music (except perhaps for 3023 CE, but only time will tell with that one).

Like in any good time travel story, there are also many easter eggs throughout (hidden surprises usually identifiable by someone familiar with the subject/artform/digital work), which in a musical context might come across as a quotation or irritatingly familiar moment that passes before you can know it. I should also mention that the text used in the first movement is sourced from the Babylonian Theodicy, written/inscribed/etched around 977 BCE.

Happy travelling.

Movements:
(BCE = Before the Current Era, CE = Current Era).
I – 977 BCE
II – 23 BCE
III – 1023 CE
IV – 2023 CE (present day)
V – 3023 CE