Synchronicities (2022)

General Information

Movements:
I. 2 2 7 5 10 5 4
II. 2 8 11 6 18 5 1

Commissioner: The Yale Undergraduate Chamber Orchestra
Written: December 2021 – March 2022
Duration: ca. 13’
Instrumentation: 1 1 1 1 - 1 1 1 0 - pf soloist - elec kyd - str [2 1 1 1]

Performance History

April 23, 2022: Max Hammond and the Yale Undergraduate Chamber Orchestra, led by Benjamin Beckman; Saybrook Underbrook, Yale University, New Haven, CT (World Premiere)

Perusal Score

~ This score below is intended for perusal purposes only, and may not be used for performance. To obtain performance materials, please click here. Thank you! ~

Program Note

In mid-December, 2021, I and a number of members of the Yale Undergraduate Chamber Orchestra gathered together on a cold winter night and held a séance. Communing with spirits, each of the seven people present rolled dice, and we recorded the generated sequences of numbers.

Synchronicity is “the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.” I took those sequences of dice rolls and used them as a numeric base to inform the composition of this piece. In the two movements, the sequences that title the work's two movements are used to determine rhythms, harmonies, melodies, form, and other fundamental aspects of the musical material. But while I did use these numbers as generative material, I still needed to compose the piece, with my own musical style and sensibility. My construction of affect and emotion on top of random sequences of numbers itself creates synchronicity: the emotional experience of the piece and the randomly generated (or divined?) sequences of numbers have no causal connection. But in some supernatural way, they are intimately connected in an act of creating musical meaning – my own musical synchronicities.