Andrew McManus, composer

“The crash of sound – the screeching crash of ripped metal and of pressures colliding on conflicting circuits, the sound of a monster turning upon itself – was heard only inside the structure.  No sound was heard outside.  Outside, the structure merely rose into the air, suddenly and silently, cracked open into a few large pieces, shot some hissing streaks of blue light into the sky and came down as a pile of rubble.” (Atlas Shrugged, 1132)

There are multiple narrative threads that converge in the penultimate chapter of Atlas Shrugged.  One finds Dr. Robert Stadler trying to recover the weapon he invented from those who would misuse it.  Another finds Dagny Taggart slowly detaching herself from the battle she has waged against those who have tried to undermine her railroad company.  The last finds John Galt being tortured by his captors, who try to force him to save the world from its imminent demise.  This headlong dramatic motion towards the end of the book is the motive force behind The Generator. I chose to reference the convergence of narrative threads by rotating through multiple sections of contrasting musical material.

The piece rotates through three evocative and contrasting sections.  The tempo of each section is related to the others by simple ratio, and this allows for “metric modulations” between each section.  This technique, first used extensively by Elliott Carter in his String Quartet No. 1 (1950-1951), takes one rhythmic value and defines it as another.  (For instance, redefining a quarter note as a dotted eighth will change the tempo by a ratio of 4:3.)  But this isn’t the only rhythmic complexity – these tempos actually occur simultaneously in a few places, such as the ending, where each instrument plays in a different tempo and creates a sort of controlled chaos.  But The Generator is fundamentally a virtuosic showpiece – although it’s somewhat systematic with these techniques, it’s more concerned with using them as the means to an expressive end.

Score excerpt here!