Vision of Discovery

Image: NASA, SwRI

Vision of Discovery is a symphonic overture for orchestra, inspired by NASA’s Lucy mission and its trail-blazing robotic exploration of the Trojan asteroids. The piece is part of my contribution to the #NASALucySoundscape, a project which invites composers "to express a feeling or tell a story of inspiration and discovery" using a three-note motif that the Lucy Team adopted as a "musical mission patch". 

2024 Revision: Orchestra reduced in size, opening tightened, further development added in the first half of the piece.

Digital Performance

Vision_of_Discovery_2024.mp3

Generated using Finale 26 and Garritan Personal Orchestra 5. Audio levels are low so you will need to turn up the volume. If you don't hear the entrance of the basses at 1 minute in, please boost your bass, or use better headphones or speakers.

This recording is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0). You may share the recording with others and/or use it in derivative works as long as you explicitly credit me and do not use the recording for commercial purposes. In addition, you may not alter the metadata in the audio file identifying the title, composer, artist, or licensing information. The license pertains only to the audio recording and not to the underlying musical work or public performances. This recording, the underlying musical work, and score are © 2024 Thomas S. Statler. If you are interested in performing this work, please contact me.

Listener's Notes

Vision of Discovery is a celebration of humanity’s quest for knowledge. Its direct inspiration is NASA’s Lucy mission, a 12-year robotic exploration of the Trojan asteroids conceived, designed, and carried out by a team of diverse and dedicated individuals. Musically rooted in a three-note motif that evokes a bold question, Vision of Discovery unfolds in a series of episodes. The quiet beginning symbolizes the realm of the not-yet-discovered: not empty, but rich and enigmatic. The motif hovers in this realm ambiguously, then opens into a broad theme representing the curiosity and intellect that drive humans to explore and understand. This transitions to a gentler episode symbolizing the many people whose lives intersect on the mission team, having many voices yet working toward a common goal. Following this is a complex, animated section suggesting the technology and the machinery of exploration, which has to fit together better than clockwork to perform. Then an abrupt pause, countdown, and launch! An enormous lift and an incredible acceleration; then separation; systems come to life; solar panels deploy; and the machine that people built to go where they cannot plunges into the void. Years pass in the loneliness of the long dark cruise. But as the objective comes into sight, humanity, machinery, and vision come together to achieve the culminating moment of affirmation and discovery – which passes in an instant, leaving the realm of the not-yet-discovered again before us, richer than it was, with our understanding enlarged and our vision extended into the unknown.

Instrumentation

Composerish Stuff and Other Details

I went for a deliberately cinematic feel with this piece, because I wanted it to connect with people emotionally and this is an idiom that many people will understand. Many who aren't drawn to symphonic music for its own sake will be perfectly OK with - and may even insist on - a symphonic film score for an epic adventure. I listened to a hefty sampling of movie soundtracks at the outset, to get my head going in the right direction. (Thanks and RIP, Elmer Bernstein!) The piece is through-composed, except for the "rocket launch" episode, which is a guided improvisation. That is, it's a guided improvisation in the score; for the digital rendition I had to write out every note as if it were improvised (since I'm not a good improvisor at the keyboard), which was a bit of a pain in the neck. That's reason #867 why human orchestras are better than digitally simulated ones. Suggestions from experienced Finale and GPO5 users for how to improve the audio quality are welcome.

If you like your music more challenging, have a listen to The Prince of Venosa Expands to Fill the Observable Universe before you conclude I'm too conventional. Oddly, both pieces start with ppp whole-tone clusters in the woodwinds. I wrote them more than 30 years apart and they have very little in common after the opening bars. I guess I just think that whole-tone clusters are peaceful and mysterious.

Thanks to Joe Rebman and Sabien Canton for their advice on what harpists would like to do when given the opportunity to make a lot of noise.

2024 Revision: Immense thanks to conductor Juliano Aniceto for taking the time to review the original version of this piece and for offering extensive, encouraging, and helpful comments. In addition to shrinking the orchestra a little and re-balancing the instrumentation, I tightened up and shortened the opening episode, and slightly expanded the development in the subsequent two sections, giving more prominence to the blues elements when they appear. Handling the blues in a way that made sense in the context of the rest of the piece was a challenge. The solution I eventually hit on was to keep the strings going in a classical manner, but following simple blues chord changes, and then add the truly bluesy interjections in the winds; I think it gives the right impression of a diversity of personal styles on the same team.