THROUGHLINE (2020)
(for six soloists and orchestra)

Throughline is divided into 13 sections, played without pause. Half of them are mini-concerti, but each of those movements features one member of the orchestra, almost as a duet with the soloist. The piece takes advantage of the digital medium by playing with impossible ensembles within the orchestra, such as an difficult-in-a-concert-hall acoustic effect of a piccolo balanced with metallic percussion balanced with a solo violin, or a bass flute pitted against three contrabasses and three cellos. The ghost of Bach appears in the shape of two chorales embedded in one of the ensemble sections and one of the solo sections, and, in stark opposition, one of the movements (No. 7) features an artificial intelligence entity, designed by scientist Carol Reiley, who takes nine composed bars and writes nine more of its own. The human voice appears twice: once with a solo soprano singing a text adapted from Thomas Traherne, and then in wordless text in a movement improvised by Esperanza Spalding, onto which I overlayed four solo cellos from the orchestra. At the end of the piece, the heavily gridded music vanishes into a kind of organic drone, with Esa-Pekka Salonen “playing” rhythmic gestures in silence, with the orchestra responding. I attempted to have each movement justify and navigate the extreme logistical, and indeed emotional, ramifications of COVID-19 and its attendant restrictions, but without any prescriptive emotional content. The normally technical words associated with recordings (“Isolation,” “Room” “Grid”) take on more elaborate and subtly charged meanings now.

Note: The seventh movement contains nine bars of three-part counterpoint composed by me, which I sent to scientist Carol Reiley, who then fed that material to an artifcial intelligence entity. That entity then “finished” the remaining half of the piece, and sent me back its work, which I then redistributed for the ensemble (comprising solo vibraphone, solo celesta, and solo contrabass). The eighth movement comprises an improvisation by Esperanza Spalding, onto which I overlayed an arrangement for four cellos. – Nico Muhly