Program Notes for Music for 

the End of Time and Cybeline

“Music for the End of Time” is a 50-minute work for trombone and quadraphonic electronics based on the Book of Revelation.  We used our experience with music theater to attempt a kind of dramatic tone poem for trombone and computer.   We explore all aspects of the trombone, ranging from symphonic expressions of “divine wrath,” to wild rhythmic unisons with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, to the gentlest, meditative lyricism.  These are the movements and the verses they are based upon:

I. A Door Was Opened in Heaven,

After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven... (Rev. 4:1.)

II. The Sea of Glass

And before the throne was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. (Rev. 4.6)

III. The Four Horsemen

And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone. (Rev. 9:17)

IV. As It Were A Trumpet Talking

... and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.  (Rev. 4:1.)

V. The White Beast

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.  And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. (Rev. 6:8)

VI. A Woman Clothed With the Sun

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.  (Rev. 12:1

We were drawn to the Book of Revelation more by its rich imagery and symbolism than any sort of doctrinaire religious belief.  At times, St. John’s writing is quite transcendental, but at others, its imbittered visions are almost insanely horrific.  In this sense, parts of “Music for the End of Time” follow in the traditions of “crazy” composers as exemplified by Moussorsgky’s “Night On Bald Mountain,” Berlioz’s “Symphony Fantastique,” and some of the deeply bi-polar melancholy/exhuberance of Schuman and Mahler.  In some cases, it is exactly this form of “folly” that allows for transcendental experience.  We often found that the cinematic bias of MIDI technology was more useful for creating the large dramatic arch of "Music for the End of Time" than more advanced instruments like MAX/MSP and C-Sound.

When approaching apocalyptic visions, which are often very violent, it is important to carefully consider their implications.  On one hand, these visions have helped humans appreciate the extreme limitation of our existential condition in relation to the boundless majesty of the universe. But apocalyptic visions can also lead to misappropriated notions of divine justice, or even divine wrath that are anything but transcendental.  Such visions are often not divine at all, but rather very human expressions of contempt and hatred for those we ourselves deem unworthy.  In a world that seems to increasingly reflect imperialistic hubris, and in a world with increasing beliefs about the divinity of murdering others, the dangers of misappropriated apocalyptic visions should not be under estimated. 

Patriarchal transcendentalism tends toward recurrent cycles of ecstasy, revolution, destruction and lament. These polarities inform the arrangement of the movements in Music for the End of Time, and shape their cycles of light/darkness, drama/reflection, ecstasy/remorse. This is especially notable in “The Four Horsemen,” where a sort of symphonic intensity and lamentive reflection alternate like repeated charges of horsemen. 
 
Ultimately, the most meaningful understandings of the apocalyptic have little to do with destruction, but with vanquishing our own human limitations. Through the apocalyptic, we transcend not so much the universe, as our own self. We learn that in the infinite expanse of this world, our human passions are often the sheerest folly, and that the truest path to justice is through forgiveness, compassion and love. 
 
Perhaps that understanding is what St. John hoped to symbolize in his vision of "The Woman Clothed with the Sun." The ultimate value of transcendental experience might be that it shows us that nothing is more precious or transcendent than the simple beauty of life itself. 

Program Notes for Cybeline 

Cybeline is about a mad woman contemplating the effects the mass media has on her mind. She feels she has been programmed by the media, and that this has turned her into a cyborg.  Rather than wear a tin foil hat and rail against brainwashing, she creates her own imaginary talk show as a means to study the media’s effects.  Using her own animations, she parodies interviews by speaking with imaginary characters from history, parodies talk show host’s humorous lists, sings a parody of a cowboy song, jokes about opera, creates fake commercials, talks about the powers of technology, and sings a Schubert Lied about how she could serve her masters better if she were a cyborgian waterwheel with a thousand arms.  She also plays the trombone and has a glove controller for a synth that allows her to make cyborgian music.

Her routines are turned on and off by an obnoxious buzzer that controls her almost like a marionette.  Between routines she speaks about her life, the “scientists” who examine and program her, and eventually about the voices she hears in her head that come from goddesses who reside in the beauty of nature. 

The stark delineations between Cybeline’s on-air showbiz routines and her off-air reflections gradually dissolve as she delves into a story about a murdered and dismembered woman named Maxine who is reassembled by scientists to be stereo-typically feminine.  Strong, horrific memories of Maxine’s violent murder intrude upon Cybeline’s cyborgian fantasies.  Cybeline senses that her internal and external worlds have been engineered by the media in the same way that Maxine was dismembered and reassembled.  She wonders if even her memories are artificial creations. 

Cybeline sings an excerpt from a Schubert Lied about a dream of a spring that turns out to be only flowers and birds painted on window glass, while reality is a dark winter whose sky is filled with ravens.  A vision follows where she sees the ultimate expression of technology as war.  After all of this, Cybeline angrily defies her “examiners” and is shutdown completely. 

In many respects, Cybeline was written in response to a recent Ars Electronic Festival in Austria which focused on the aesthetic use of eugenics.  Evolutionary biologist Randy Thornhill, author of the controversial book A Natural History of Rape, presented a lecture asserting that rape is a natural part of male sexuality, and that women should restrict their behavior to avoid this “natural” phenomenon.  Media artist and prophet of cyber-sex, Stahl Stenslie, presented a lecture in which he said, “Even rape can be considered as an art-creational strategy.”  Nobuya Unno, a member of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tokyo , presented a lecture on artificial placentas, including grotesque photos of goats being incubated in artificial wombs.  Researchers from Boston ’s  Massachusetts General Hospital presented a project entitled “Tissue Culture & Art(ifical) Wombs.” Their goal is to use tissue culture and tissue engineering as a medium for artistic expression. They have created what they call “semi-living” dolls. 

In spite of the focus on human reproduction, there were virtually no presentations by women.  The festival seemed to present a continuation of a common narrative: being a woman is a biological curse; the womb represents a chaotic force of nature which must be tamed; woman is a receptacle for the “natural” desire of rape; she is a half-living doll to be played with; she carries a burden of womanhood that can only be lifted by dismembering and re-engineering her body to effect a leap to men’s self-appointed status of creative autonomy.

In our response, we aimed for a postmodern irony masking horror rather than the expressionistic ranting of modernism.  Even if Ars Electronica’s bizarre explorations were courageous, we feel their misogynistic tone was deeply misguided.  We study the idea that cyborgs are much more likely created by programming the human mind rather than biologically engineering tissue.