“luscinia” is the genus portion of the scientific name for the common nightingale, Luscinia megarhynchos. Nightingales are small birds found primarily throughout Europe and Asia, and are known for their highly varied song, which is often sung at night. They have been referenced throughout literature, music, and visual art for centuries, though perhaps one of the nightingale’s most well-known appearances is in the tale of Philomel, found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Ovid writes of a young woman who is assaulted by her brother-in-law, Tereus, who then cuts out her tongue to prevent her from identifying him as the perpetrator. Unable to speak, she weaves a tapestry depicting her assault and sends it to her sister Procne, who hatches a plan to exact revenge. After discovering this plan, Tereus chases Procne and Philomel into the forest, where they escape by being turned into birds – Procne into a swallow, and Philomel into a nightingale. For many artists, the nightingale’s song has often had melancholy connotations, presumably due in some part to Ovid’s story; however, in a somewhat cruelly ironic twist, modern ornithologists have found that it is usually only the male nightingale that actually sings (as is the case with many species of birds). This piece incorporates live electronic processing, which involves both the generation of new sounds in response to the orchestra and live modification of what the orchestra is playing. This allows for the seamless integration of the acoustic and electronic elements of the piece, and in some cases, they may be indistinguishable. One of the most important aspects of the processing of the orchestra allows for the production of vocal sounds using the spectral profiles of the music that the orchestra is playing. In this way, the orchestra is able to give voice to those who have historically been silenced. In fact, luscinia is, most of all, a meditation on silence (albeit not a peaceful, pastoral one). Anyone who has paid attention to the news as of late knows that we are currently experiencing a watershed moment with respect to societal conversations surrounding sexual assault. Though I began work on this piece many months prior to the Harvey Weinstein investigation (and the many others that have followed), I hope that someday soon, situations such as the impetus for this piece will no longer be commonplace. While many composers hope that their music stays relevant long after its premiere, I can say with certainty that I sincerely hope that this piece does not. It is time for change, and it is time for action. I am immensely grateful to all of the people who contributed their stories to the electronic component of this piece, and to Maestro Schick and the orchestra for their trust and adventurousness in bringing it off of the page. I am also grateful to the Nee family for supporting this commission (and emerging composers in general), and for their belief in the importance of the creation of new music.

An LSTM was trained on rehearsal recordings of the Scelsi pieces on the program involving a combination of MFCCs, chroma features, and my annotations of the next module of my piece associated with averaging over a temporal window (which was tuned during the rehearsal process). In this way, it acts like a predictive algorithm based upon timbre and pitch. Using a combination of Python and Max, the MFCC and chroma calculations and consequent score module selections are communicated to the players’ tablets via Node.js and WebSockets. In order for performers to practice and gain fluency with the interface and materials, I created a stochastic version (without live analysis) of the algorithm. That can be accessed here.

Additionally, I created a very simple web app for audience participation for the post-concert talk-back and reception, where audience members could improvise and “remix” recordings from the performance to continue the chain of collaboration and co-creation integral to Scelsi’s work. That is available here. I unfortunately do not have any quality documentation of the post-concert interaction period. I designed the audioreactive visuals in response to Scelsi’s personal signature emblem (a circle above a line of roughly the same diameter), which he viewed as a less egocentric approach to attribution of his work.

“what didn’t you do to bury me
but you forgot that I was a seed”
-Dinos Christianopoulos, The Body and the Wormwood (1978)