Steven Bryant

Ecstatic Waters (2009) Steven Bryant (b. 1972)

I. Ceremony of Innocence

II. Augurs

III. The Generous Wrath of Simple Men

IV. The Loving Machinery of Justice

V. Spiritus Mundi (epilogue)

Solace (2012) Steven Bryant

The Automatic Earth (2019) Steven Bryant

I. A Slow Fire

II. Days of Miracle and Wonder

III. Shining of Shadow

IV. The Automatic Earth

V. The Language of Light

This concert will be presented entirely without pause. Please hold your applause until the end of the concert.

There are several sequences of flashing lights and dark to brilliant light. Those with sensitivity to light might consider sitting in the balcony.

The following program notes for all three works tonight are presented as written by the composer, Steven Bryant.

Ecstatic Waters is music of dialectical tension – a juxtaposition of contradictory or opposing musical and extra-musical elements and an attempt to resolve them. The five connected movements hint at a narrative that touches upon naiveté, divination, fanaticism, post-human possibilities, anarchy, order, and the Jungian collective unconscious. Or, as I have described it more colloquially: W.B. Yeats meets Ray Kurzweil in the Matrix.

The overall title, as well as “Ceremony of Innocence” and “Spiritus Mundi” are taken from poetry of Yeats (“News for the Delphic Oracle,” and “The Second Coming”), and his personal, idiosyncratic mythology and symbolism of spiraling chaos and looming apocalypse figured prominently in the genesis of the work. Yet in a nod to the piece’s structural reality – as a hybrid of electronics and living players – Ecstatic Waters also references the confrontation of unruly humanity with the order of the machine, as well as the potential of a post-human synthesis, in ways inspired by Kurzweil.

The first movement, Ceremony of Innocence, begins as a pure expression of exuberant joy in unapologetic Bb Major in the Celesta and Vibraphone. The movement grows in momentum, becoming perhaps too exuberant – the initial simplicity evolves into a full-throated brashness bordering on dangerous arrogance and naiveté, though it retreats from the brink and ends by returning to the opening innocence.

In Mvt. II, Augurs, the unsustainable nature of the previous Ceremony becomes apparent, as the relentless tonic of Bb in the crystal water glasses slowly diffuses into a microtonal cluster, aided and abetted by the trumpets. Chorale–like fragments appear, foretelling the wrathful self-righteousness of Mvt. III. The movement grows inexorably, spiraling wider and wider, like Yeat’s gyre, until “the center cannot hold,” and it erupts with supreme force into The Generous Wrath of Simple Men.

Mvt. III is deceptive, musically contradicting what one might expect of its title. While it erupts at the outset with overwhelming wrath, it quickly collapses into a relentless rhythm of simmering 16th notes. Lyric lines and pyramids unfold around this, interrupted briefly by the forceful anger of a chorale, almost as if trying to drown out and deny anything but its own existence. A moment of delicate lucidity arrives amidst this back-and-forth struggle, but the chorale ultimately dominates, subsuming everything, spiraling out of control, and exploding.

The Loving Machinery of Justice brings machine-like clarity and judgment. Subtle, internal gyrations between atonality and tonality underpin the dialogue between lyric melody (solo Clarinet and Oboe) and mechanized accompaniment (Bassoons). An emphatic resolution in Ab minor concludes the movement, floating seamlessly into the epilogue, Spiritus Mundi. Reprising music from Mvt. I, this short meditative movement reconciles and releases the earlier excesses.

Special thanks to Drew Leslie for recording the trombone material used in the electronic sounds in movement II.

Solace is music for its own sake, ordered first and foremost by its own internal logic, derived from a small amount of initial material. Constructed from a single nine-tone row, the music is heavily anchored by the persistent initial C#/Db throughout much of the piece, often in the form of a subtle, unsettled drone. Solace divides into two equal halves. The first section opens with a veiled atmosphere built on the first notes of the row. A moment of harmonic stability in the piano gives way to a steady pulse, building relentlessly to a dissonant climax, which then spirals inward back to the C#/Db anchor. The piano returns, concluding with a quantum of consolation, before a brass chorale initiates the second section. Pitting expressive fluidity against rhythmic rigidity, the chorale aggregates mass, finally cohering into simple triadic clarity, while simultaneously coming unmoored from the sustained C#/Db that has anchored the work. The piano again returns, accompanied by clarinets, offering a quiet conclusion as their final chord transforms into the familiar percolating drone, and evaporating. Solace offers the experience of seeking, and perhaps finding, consolation. Scored for standard wind ensemble plus electronics, the work seamlessly augments the timbre and power of the ensemble by transforming recordings of individual players from within the group. Special thanks to Janet Phillips (Flute), Mark Cramer (Clarinet 1), Liam Scott (Clarinet 2), Trevor Davis (Bass Clarinet), Xin Gao (Alto and Soprano Saxophone), and Sebastian Schraml (Trumpet) for their recorded contributions.

Our way of life is unsustainable, therefore it will not continue. The Automatic Earth weaves together two threads: the climate crisis, and the technological transformation of what it is to be human. The tandem acceleration of technological wonder and ecological catastrophe means, at best, a strange, unrecognizable future, likely within our own lifetimes.

As the interlocking set of crises that we call climate change make life more and more difficult for everyone, I fear we will turn, in desperation, to geoengineering and human re-engineering We will alter the earth and alter our bodies in radical, untested ways in order to survive. Surpassed only by an extraordinary change in our willingness to cooperate with each other.

In other words, it confronts our own hubris in thinking that technological progress will somehow magically solve the problems created by the last round of technological progress.

I wrote a piece in 2008 called Ecstatic Waters which addressed the merging of human and computer. In this work, I was ultimately optimistic that we would eventually find a successful way to become more than human, to transcend our organic limitations and become happier, fitter creatures. Now, however, I’m not so sure it will be a good thing, but if it’s possible, then it’s inevitable. Humanity will alter itself, or it will perish.

“The warming effect of increasing carbon dioxide takes decades to influence the planet’s temperature. Even if we cut all emissions today, we are still set for a temperature rise, due to the cumulative effect of the climate. To meet a goal of 1.5 °C warming, this demands immediately cutting the planet’s emissions to 45 % below 2010 levels by 2030. If the global temperature rises by 1.5°C, humans will face unprecedented climate-related risks and weather events. We are on track for a 3-4°C temperature rise.”

– 2018 IPCC report

“We have to keep 80 percent of the fossil-fuel reserves that we know about underground. If we don’t—if we dig up the coal and oil and gas and burn them—we will overwhelm the planet’s physical systems, heating the Earth far past the red lines drawn by scientists and governments. It’s not ‘we should do this,’ or ‘we’d be wise to do this.’ Instead it’s simpler: ‘We have to do this.’”

– Bill McKibben, Yes! Magazine, 15 February 2016

“We shall best understand the probable course of natural selection by taking the case of a country undergoing some physical change, for instance, of climate. The proportional numbers of its inhabitants would almost immediately undergo a change, and some species might become extinct.”

– Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

Over the dark mountain, over the dark pinewood,
Down the long dark valley along the shrunken river,
Returns the splendor without rays, the shining of shadow,
Peace-bringer, the matrix of all shining and quieter of shining.
Where the shore widens on the bay she opens dark wings
And the ocean accepts her glory. O soul worshipful of her
You like the ocean have grave depths where she dwells always,
And the film of waves above that takes the sun takes also
Her, with more love. The sun-lovers have a blond favorite,
A father of lights and noises, wars, weeping and laughter,
Hot labor, lust and delight and the other blemishes. Quietness
Flows from her deeper fountain; and he will die; and she is
immortal.
– Robinson Jeffers, Night

It was a dry wind
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth
– Paul Simon, “The Boy in the Bubble”

We did not intend this harm, but we have done it; given the reign of neoliberalism and the lies of the fossil fuel industry, living as social beings almost required that we do this harm. But now, if we wish to remain social beings, something else is required of us.

– Emily Johnston, Loving a Vanishing World

Special thanks to Dr. Katrina Clements for recording some of the Clarinet material used in the electronic sounds.

Steven Bryant’s music is chiseled in its structure and intent, fusing lyricism, dissonance, silence, technology, and humor into lean, skillfully-crafted works that enthrall listeners and performers alike. His seminal work Ecstatic Waters, for wind ensemble and electronics, has become one of the most performed works of its kind in the world, receiving over 250 performances in its first five seasons. In 2015, the orchestral version was premiered by the Minnesota Orchestra to unanimous, rapturous acclaim. The son of a professional trumpeter and music educator, he strongly values music education, and his creative output includes a number of works for young and developing musicians.

John Corigliano states Bryant’s “compositional virtuosity is evident in every bar” of his 34’ Concerto for Wind Ensemble. Bryant’s first orchestral work, Loose Id for Orchestra, hailed by composer Samuel Adler as “orchestrated like a virtuoso,” was premiered by The Juilliard Symphony and is featured on a CD release by the Bowling Green Philharmonia on Albany Records. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra commissioned “Zeal” Alchemy in Silent Spaces, commissioned by James DePreist and The Juilliard School, was premiered by the Juilliard Orchestra in May 2006. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW series featured his brass quintet, Loose Id, conducted by Cliff Colnot, on its 2012-13 concert series.

His evening-length work for the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, The Treachery of Sounds, based on several images of René Magritte, uses a live application of binaural technology by placing every member of the audience in headphones to create an immersive experience that defies the listener’s sense of reality. Other recent commissions include Zeal for Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, a large-scale intermedia project for Arizona State University, the Concerto for Trombone for Joseph Alessi and the Dallas Winds, as well as works for the Gaudete Brass Quintet (Chicago), cellist Caroline Stinson (Lark Quartet), pianist Pamela Mia Paul, the Amherst Saxophone Quartet (funded by the American Composers Jerome Composers Commissioning Program), the University of Texas – Austin Wind Ensemble, the US Air Force Band of Mid-America, the Japanese Wind Ensemble Conductors Conference, and the Calgary Stampede Band, as well as many others.

Steven was Distinguished Visiting Professor of Composition at the University of North Carolina Greensboro for the 2014-2015 academic year. Steven studied composition with John Corigliano at The Juilliard School, Cindy McTee at the University of North Texas, and Francis McBeth at Ouachita University, trained for one summer in the mid-1980s as a break-dancer (i.e. was forced into lessons by his mother), was the 1987 radio-controlled car racing Arkansas state champion, has a Bacon Number of 1, and has played saxophone with Branford Marsalis on Sleigh Ride. He resides in Durham, NC with his wife, conductor Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant (Duke University).

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