Robert Carl

Orchestra 2(2+picc)222 - 221(btrb)0 - timp (5 drums) - strings

Composer's Note:

For the past few years, I found myself periodically driving across the western US. And over roughly a decade, I’ve noticed a striking change. The number of wind energy farms has exploded. There are places where the white turbines stretch as far as the eye can see, ahead and on either side.

For me, their scale and grand motion are inspiring. It comes out of the human instinct to build on a vast scale, and yet it is also intimately linked to nature.

The piece is a tone poem, in two movements played without pause. The first, “Aerial View“ evokes the passage of a series of farms seen from a great enough distance that each one has a distinct character, parsed into the different string sections. The second, “Surface View", subdivides the strings so as to create a weaving micropolyphony, as though one is walking amidst the turbines. And out of the motives that make up this motion, the larger hymn emerges.