The Danger

2021 | for SATB choir w/divisi | 5'

The Danger sets the text of the long-term radiation warning proposed by the nuclear scientists of the United States government to inscribe on permanent nuclear waste storage sites. The message is unambiguously foreboding and intensely serious. Since today's written languages may well be unintelligible tens of thousands of years into the future, there have also been many proposals for non-textual ways to communicate this message, via everything from pictographic signs and atomic priesthood traditions to radiation-sensing flora and bioluminescent cats. The solutions I find most evocative and compelling are the architectural ones: irregular concrete thorns, slabs of black basalt, ominous grids of blocks and spikes that point to nothing and lead nowhere.

With the discordant harmonies, sudden dynamic contrasts, and shifting rhythms in The Danger, I intend to evoke the same feelings as this primally disturbing architecture is meant to convey. Music is, of course, no universal language, despite what the platitudes of our time might assert. But, like the scientists who wrote this warning, I wrote this piece as a looming monument to the warnings our society must send into the future.

The Danger is a challenging choral piece, best for 20-person or larger choirs already familiar with dissonant modern or contemporary music. Thematically, it would fit well on a program about the environment, the future, or deep time (perhaps paired with very early music).