Michael Rothkopf

Clarinet, Guitar, and Live Electronics

Composer's Note:

Understood as one of the remaining mysteries of classical physics, turbulence has fascinated and challenged humanity in its quest to move, journey and travel throughout the world. Physicist Lewis Fry Richardson described it as “Big whorls have little whorls which feed on their velocity and little whorls have lesser whorls and so on to viscosity.” Physicist Werner Heisenberg declared “When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.” 

In composing “Turbulence” I sought to create a musical landscape for the musicians to move through in which the computer creates a flow of turbulence around the musicians path.  At times the musicians join the turbulent flow and at other times they slow to a calm stasis in their quest to find equilibrium.

Publisher's Note:

New 2025 edition. Purchase includes download to electronic media files - an Apple operating system (macOS) is required to run the electronics on this piece.