Quantum Flux/Universal Lyre (for Cowell and Thoreau)

for synthesizer and piano (2013; 15 min.)

A beautiful passage from Thoreau’s Walden describes how a distant church bell’s peal is affected by the intervening forest, becoming notes played on the “universal lyre.” A synthesizer patch I worked out struck me as playing an analogous role, creating unpredictable and lovely variations on a held chord, or even a single note. The sounds seem to wink in and out of existence, much like particles in the quantum flux which theoretical physicists surmise is the seedbed of creation. Like the synthesizer’s, the piano’s part is fixed in its larger structure but of the moment in its details.

performed by David Vayo, synthesizer and piano