aberoica, for four amplified voices and three amplified instruments (1997)

The text for aberoica comes from Johann Forkel's Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik:

Arts and Sciences grow like all creations of nature, little by little until they are perfected. The time between the first beginning and the highest perfection is filled with so many forms between, that one can observe everywhere not only the gradual progress from the simple to the complex, from the small to the large, but also the wholeness and integrity of every individual thing which is part of this succession.

Though the notion of perfection is long outmoded, a paean to progress like this is always timely. Forkel's book was first published in 1788, during the original age of Progress, when Beethoven came of age, when heroic and avant-garde were not mutually exclusive. The heroic has given way to the ironic, but the second is still descended from the first. Modernism may have failed in a few places--Brasilia, collective agriculture, the Astrodome--but it has clearly won the day in postwar music, never mind its dismissal by new Hanslicks.

Listen to an MP3 excerpt from aberoica.