Like an Altar with 9,000 Robot Attendants
Orchestra
5'
5'
|
Performances
USC Thornton Symphony Donald Crockett, conductor Bovard Auditorium, University of Southern California 10/16/15 | Los Angeles, CA | 7:30pm Awards Winner, 2015 USC New Music for Orchestra Competition Alternate, 2016 Minnesota Orchestra Composers Institute Finalist, 2017 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards Selection, 2018 American Composers Orchestra Underwood New Music Readings |
Program Notes
Like an Altar with 9,000 Robot Attendants was inspired by Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950). The futuristic story describes a computer-controlled house, in which robots do everything from cooking breakfast to cleaning house. The house even reads poetry aloud. In Bradbury’s future, all humans have been destroyed, but this house remains steadfast to its tasks in service of its absent denizens. The author describes it: “And inside, the house was like an altar with nine thousand robot attendants, big and small, servicing, attending, singing in choirs, even though the gods had gone away and the ritual was meaningless.” All humans have been annihilated, and yet Bradbury’s futurist prose remains characteristically exuberant in describing these household robots—a tension which stimulated me to write the music in this piece. I also felt that the orchestra—an ensemble associated with myriad rituals—was the perfect medium through which to explore ideas of robotic ritual. |