So-Called ‘Natural Selection’

14/04/08 for strings and speaking voice

Rotating calculator, made from plastic sheets, used to calculate segments of the cycle of fourths employed in the work.

Composer's note

Suppose somebody had travelled back in time and accidentally stood on a semiquaver written by one of the Immortal Greats; might the whole future evolution of music have been different?

Notes

Commissioned and first performed by Scottish Philharmonic Orchestra, Dir Gordon Rigby, Cond Peter Cynfryn Jones, Òran Mór Glasgow 14/3/2008, with the speaking part being taken by composer and percussionist Steve Forman.

A tangent to, or a study towards, The Other Other Hand, both works betraying a fascination with the slightly worrying strands of 'social Darwinism' apparent in C Hubert H Parry's 1909 'The Evolution of the Art of Music', and the worry that many of these supremacist notions perhaps still inform our understanding of so-called 'classical' music.

Duration ~10'