Robert Carl

Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Piano

Composer's Note:

In the summer of 2021, I saw in a museum a spectrograph of a single day's sounds of different animals in nature. It was compressed into a few minutes, and it immediately gave me the idea for this piece. In it we hear a progression from a "Dawn Chorus" of birds, to an "Afternoon Paean" of frogs, to a final "Evening Incantation" of cicadas. All are faded into one another, without pause. There is no attempt to literally mimic the sounds of these creatures: all the motives are my own inventions in the spirit of their songs. And in each section there is the momentary appearance of a motive that I call "the observer", which is the human who is taking in this little symphony, and storing it for future use.

I think of this piece as a tribute to music that is created independently of the human concept thereof. It is also elegiac, in that I'm seeming to notice fewer morning bird songs even in the course of my life, and though I hope not, I fear a small work like this may be a memorial for something we as a species are destroying.