Composer: Nico Muhly

Sentences
Countertenor and Chamber Orchestra Vocal Score
Publisher: St. Rose Music Publishing Co.
Category: Vocal
Series: Music Sales America
Format: Softcover


Sentences is a thirty-minute meditation, in collaboration with Adam Gopnik, on several episodes drawn from the life and work of Alan Turing. Turing lived, in a sense, many different lives, but at the heart of his work was, I think, a very musical set of anxieties. Even the idea of code-breaking is inherently musical; the French for score-reading is déchiffrage: deciphering. His wartime work on the Enigma code translated, later in life, to a more nuanced relationship to code in the form of a primitive but emotionally (and philosophically) complicated artificial intelligence. The piece uses a single voice not to speak necessarily as Turing, but as a guide through these various episodes. I've always felt that the question of sentient computers is wildly emotional: we anthropomorphise the Mars Rover, imagining its solitude on that dusty planet. Any act of communication in which the second person is unseen can be a one-way conversation. An email, sent, can never be returned - did it arrive or did it not?, or a text message can be delivered but never read. The thrill of a fast response is immediately tempered with the harsh but empty rudeness of an out-of-office reply. Anybody who has made a condolence phone call only to hear the voice of the deceased on the outgoing answering machine message knows the complexities of what could be a simple binary communication. -Nico Muhly

Inventory # : 00276515
UPC: 888680990671
ISBN:
Width: 9"
Length: 12"
Height: 0.454"
Product Weight: 0.4 lbs.
Number of Pages: 48

Condition: New

Item# 00276515

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