Jordan Alexander Key (b. 1990): "Meditation after the Death of Stephen Hawking," trio for soprano, flute, double bass, and fixed media on digital excerpts from Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Malala Yousafzai, Jane Goodall, and Wangari Maathai.

Thank you, Stephen Hawking, for being an inspiration throughout my life, showing me the value of lifelong learning, impassioned teaching, unabashed imagination, and perseverance in the face of adversity.

Written for the Fonema Consort

Premier: March 29, 2019, The University of Florida, Friends of Music Room
Performance: The Fonema Consort

music by Jordan Alexander Key:
https://www.jordanalexanderkey.com/

for a score/performance video animation with subtitles see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiQSqwP5R-A

for a complete score see:
https://www.academia.edu/38897013/Meditation_after_the_Death_of_Stephen_Hawking_Trio_for_Soprano_Flute_Double_Bass_and_Fixed_Media

Meditation After The Death Of Stephen Hawking - Trio for Soprano, Flute, Double Bass and Fixed Media

Jordan Alexander Key (b. 1990): Viola Sonata No. 1, "Ceol Mor" (Winner of the 2020 AVS Maurice Gardner Competition for Composers)

Complete score available at: https://www.academia.edu/42447255/Viola_Sonata_No._1_Ceol_Mor_

"Ceol Mor" is the first part to a larger work for solo viola. This work (both this part and the whole), takes its inspiration from traditional forms, sounds, and rhythms of Scottish bagpipe music, particularly from two primary genres: "Ceol mor" (a Gaelic word meaning "big music") and "Ceol baeg" (meaning "little music"). "Ceol Mor" (also know as "Piobaireachd," pronounced "pee-oh-brach") is a traditional form of Scottish bagpipe music from the Middle Ages, formed around very basic themes, often only a few notes, and continuous variations of that theme using a system of elaborate embellishments. While this movement uses no specific piobaireachd for its material, the repetitive structure with slight variations in motivic and rhythmic execution with a slow build in tempo do pay homage to the style. Being a bagpiper himself, Jordan Alexander Key often searches for new ways to use the bagpipe in music as well as new ways to envision or contextualize traditional genres of Scottish music in "classical" concert venues. His new works for bagpipe have received international recognition, publication, and performance; most recently his work, "Microtonal Piobaireachd on Prime Numbers" was the winner of the Piobaireachd Society's "Modern Pibroch Library” 2018 competition.

Viola Sonata No. 1, "Ceol Mor"

Jordan Alexander Key (b. 1990): "憧れ: Akogare in the Waves of Shadows and Light" from "Verses from the Scroll of Sondering" after the hand scroll of Taihaku Ishiyama

Written for the Bold City Contemporary Ensemble

For the complete score of all verses see: https://www.academia.edu/43400454/Verses_from_the_Scroll_of_Sondering_Six_Verses_after_the_Hand_Scroll_of_Taihaku_Ishiyama_for_Pierrot_Ensemble_Percussion_Commissioned_by_the_Harn_Museum_of_Art_Spring_2020_

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Verse Program Note:

The verse, 憧れ: Akogare in the Waves of Shadows and Light, stands as an immediate contrast to the free and primal opening verse; this work is precisely measured and abundant in traditional melodic and harmonic patterns. This verse also introduces the keyboardist to the ensemble and gives the percussionist their first concrete material, and thus these two instruments operate as the featured constituents of this section. The title and gestures of this verse are inspired by the opening portion of the scroll after the dissociated seascape: craggy mountains and valleys, in which Ishiyama employed his most dramatic uses of light and shadow in this work. The stark change in musical aesthetic from the opening verses also parallels the drastic change from eternal, golden waves to fluctuating, precipitous penumbrae. The Japanese word akogare (ah-koh-ga-reh) is often translated directly as a feeling of frustrated “yearning”, “desire”, or “longing;” however, akogare is not necessarily romantic but rather a sense of deep admiration that one feels for someone they admire, usually someone who is exceptionally talented. Furthermore, akogare’s feeling is often colored with the acknowledgement of one’s own shortcomings and awareness that such a level of talent might be unattainable. Such is the feeling one might have when beginning to traverse Ishiyama’s scroll; in recognizing the vision and the craft that goes into such considerable artistic undertakings, one may often find a germ of yearning for that same resolute purpose and eloquently designed insight within one’s own self. One might call such a sense jealousy, but the emotion of akogare is far less base and ill-wished; rather, it glorifies in the abilities of another through reverence and the wish to one day obtain a similar level of proficiency. Such is also the feeling I have when I begin any new piece of music, studying the pieces of masters that have come before and feeling reverentially inadequate, longing to be better than I was or am. Many of my works consequently follow closely in the path of masterpieces and their masters, whom I admire. Thus, each verse in this collection is modeled on one or more pieces by different composers, for whom I feel akogare. Just as Ishiyama’s influences emerge in his heavy and evocative brush strokes among the crags of the scroll’s beginning, so too do my influences intermingle between the measures, melodies, and motives of my music.

Verses From The Scroll Of Sondering - 2. Apex And Abyss

Jordan Alexander Key (b. 1990): " 森林浴 : The Dance of Shinrinyoku and the Cuckoo Bird" from "Verses from the Scroll of Sondering" after the hand scroll of Taihaku Ishiyama

Written for the Bold City Contemporary Ensemble
First performance: Sarah Jane Young (flute), Boja Kragulj (clarinet), Philip Pan (violin), Lina Minke (cello), Galen Dean Peiskee (piano), Charlotte Mabrey (percussion)

For the complete score of all verses see: https://www.academia.edu/43400454/Verses_from_the_Scroll_of_Sondering_Six_Verses_after_the_Hand_Scroll_of_Taihaku_Ishiyama_for_Pierrot_Ensemble_Percussion_Commissioned_by_the_Harn_Museum_of_Art_Spring_2020_

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Verse Program Note:

The verse, " 森林浴: The Dance of Shinrinyoku and the Cuckoo Bird," follows again the abrupt shifts in aesthetic between the verses, this verse being perhaps the first ebullient piece of the collection. This verse is one of two dances in this entire work, both of which feature canonic writing; this verse features a canon between the violin and cello, and thus elevates them to the primary concern of this verse. This piece is a new kind of awakening from the first verse. While The Sacrament of Kogarashi signals the onset of winter, The Dance of Shinrinyoku proclaims the arrival of Spring, a time of renewal and rebirth. Thus, the sounds of birds are transformed from austere abstractions to whimsical oscinine trills and chirps amidst a springtide festival. The Japanese word Shinrinyoku (“sheen-reen-yo-koo”), literally meaning "forest bathing," is a warm-season relaxation exercise where one ventures deep into the woods where everything is peaceful. Having been an avid hiker in my adolescence and early adulthood living in the mountains of Virginia, I would often find myself in the forests of Appalachia. While peaceful to some extent, the forests were never quiet, always full of the bird songs native to that region, the chittering of squirrels in mating season, the hum of cicadas perched in the trees, the rush of wind in the leaves and water in the mountain streams. The forest in Spring is a place of many songs, a peace not of sterile ruminative silence but organic polyphloisbic counterpoint. As we move beyond the crags opening Ishiyama’s scroll we enter woodlands, and so are taken by the artist into our own “forest bath” amid the spiring ink trees of his scroll. However, I do not imagine a serene ablution under the canopy but rather one of rejuvenated animation.

Verses From The Scroll Of Sondering - 3. The Dance Of Shinrinyoku and the Cuckoo Bird

Jordan Alexander Key (b. 1990): " 物の哀れ : Mononoaware and the Avian Liturgy (Tempus Fugit)" from "Verses from the Scroll of Sondering" after the hand scroll of Taihaku Ishiyama

Written for the Bold City Contemporary Ensemble
First performance: Sarah Jane Young (flute), Boja Kragulj (clarinet), Philip Pan (violin), Lina Minke (cello), Galen Dean Peiskee (piano), Charlotte Mabrey (percussion)

For the complete score of all verses see: https://www.academia.edu/43400454/Verses_from_the_Scroll_of_Sondering_Six_Verses_after_the_Hand_Scroll_of_Taihaku_Ishiyama_for_Pierrot_Ensemble_Percussion_Commissioned_by_the_Harn_Museum_of_Art_Spring_2020_
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Verse Program Note:

The verse, 物の哀れ: Mononoaware and the Avian Liturgy (“Tempus Fugit”), is our midpoint in this collection and our moment of reflection before commencing with the cycle. One can perhaps continue our metaphor of the cycle of season in this verse: having traversed now through the austere and brisk Winter, and danced through the revitalized Spring, we now find ourselves in the quiet estival heat of a midsummer’s eve below the baldachin of stars. This is a slow and contemplative verse featuring improvisatory birds sounds from the percussionist on autoharp couched within a pondersome ensemble in a chant-like canon. The liturgy is embellished by the ritualistic chimes of the celesta/piano with the intermingling of bird calls, reminiscent of the initial verse and presaging the lethiferous rota of time’s wheel. The bird sounds that once were primal and unbridled are now constrained by the regularity of some cryptogenic, volucrine liturgy. However, though we believe in the permanence of our rites and rituals, the immortality of our liturgies and traditions, time will weather all into nothingness and return to its primordial commencement. The Japanese word, Mononoaware (“moh-no no ah-wa-reh”) or "the pathos of things," is the awareness of the impermanence of all things and the wistfulness at their ephemerality. While melancholy is associated with mononoaware, this feeling does not suggest a general sadness, but rather a deeply felt emotion that envelopes the feeler as he or she comprehends the transience of everything. Everything in existence is temporary: the beauty of youth, the passion of romance, the security of wealth, the privilege of power, the constancy of tradition, even the seemingly eternal changing of the seasons, cycle of the sun, orbit of the earth, and mosaic of the stars will all change and decay. As we worship the seeming immortality of such cosmic cycles by our millennia of tabulated requiescats and catalogued regulae, there is an abiding truth that they will inevitably and unavoidably fade, ultimately to disappear into the dissociated void of gas and dust in our ever expanding universe. However, the temporality of things should not be mourned but cherished, for such impermanence is the genesis of beauty.

Verses From The Scroll Of Sondering - 4. Mononoaware & the Avian Liturgy: "Tempus Fugit"

Jordan Alexander Key (b. 1990): " 木漏れ日: The Dance of Komorebi and the Cauldron of Fire" from "Verses from the Scroll of Sondering" after the hand scroll of Taihaku Ishiyama

Written for the Bold City Contemporary Ensemble
First performance: Sarah Jane Young (flute), Boja Kragulj (clarinet), Philip Pan (violin), Lina Minke (cello), Galen Dean Peiskee (piano), Charlotte Mabrey (percussion)

For the complete score of all verses see: https://www.academia.edu/43400454/Verses_from_the_Scroll_of_Sondering_Six_Verses_after_the_Hand_Scroll_of_Taihaku_Ishiyama_for_Pierrot_Ensemble_Percussion_Commissioned_by_the_Harn_Museum_of_Art_Spring_2020_

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Verse Program Note:

The verse, " 木漏れ日: The Dance of Komorebi and the Cauldron of Fire," brings us to an autumnal forest scene. The beginning of Fall in many parts of the world is a time of harvest and celebration before the stifling months of Winter. Here we have our second festive dance, a four parted canon and canonic fantasia. The Japanese word komorebi (“koh-mo-reh-bee”) refers to the sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees. If one has seen and walked among the kaleidoscopic panoramas of a temperate forest in Fall, the imagery of a “cauldron of fire” lit by the light of the sun chromatically rarefacted through the leaves overhead needs no further clarification. Though the verse is festive, the sense of "mononoaware" from the prior verse reminds us that such beauty is transient; the piece ends not with ululations but with whispers and the recurrent reminiscence and resurfacing of the ornithic liturgy of the prior verse, reminding us that all festivals end, all seasons change, and all life decays by the relentless flight of time.

Verses From The Scroll Of Sondering - 5. The Dance Of Komorebi and The Cauldron Of Fire

Jordan Alexander Key (b. 1990): " 幽玄: Yuugen’s Enunciation of the Infinities in the Chasm of Stars" from "Verses from the Scroll of Sondering" after the hand scroll of Taihaku Ishiyama

Written for the Bold City Contemporary Ensemble
First performance: Sarah Jane Young (flute), Boja Kragulj (clarinet), Philip Pan (violin), Lina Minke (cello), Galen Dean Peiskee (piano), Charlotte Mabrey (percussion)

For the complete score of all verses see: https://www.academia.edu/43400454/Verses_from_the_Scroll_of_Sondering_Six_Verses_after_the_Hand_Scroll_of_Taihaku_Ishiyama_for_Pierrot_Ensemble_Percussion_Commissioned_by_the_Harn_Museum_of_Art_Spring_2020_

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Verse Program Note:

The verse, 幽玄: Yuugen’s Enunciation of the Infinities in the Chasm of Stars, returns us to the beginning of our cycle; however, our return shows us only a shadow of where we began; there has been a transformation, a deliquescing of the pristine origin and diffusion of the primal substance of The Sacrament of Kogarashi. However, what emerges from this disintegration is not the false cycles we believe immortal, but the revelation of the deeper, subtler, most mysterious universal mechanisms that underlie all cycles, all transformations, all life, all cosmic occurrences. The Japanese word yuugen (“yoo-gen”) is an awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses that are too mysterious and deep for words. No greater awareness of the subtly of the universe can be had than through the apprehension of the physics and mathematics that fuels all cosmic engines. As we approach the end of Ishiyama’s scroll we have reached the sea from the distant mountains, returned to the vision of the pristine origin; however, we are compelled onward, beyond this origin to a deeper truth. We find ourselves pulled into the black chasm of stars over and past the sea, we are pulled out of our cycle, beyond the seasons, beyond cycles of the moon and sun, beyond life, beyond death to the greater mystery of the cosmos. We are called to recognize the transience, and consequent beauty, of the human experience by enunciating that which is perhaps most immortal in this universe - not our laws but its own – by boldly contemplating, as mathematician Georg Cantor did in the late 19th century, the infinities of infinities, the infinities within infinities, and our humble ability to apprehend that which is most supreme and everlasting in our species’ perhaps evermore diminishing time to gaze upon this universe in miraculous self-awareness.

Verses From The Scroll Of Sondering - 6. Yuugen's Enunciation of Infinities in the Chasm of Stars

For a complete score see: https://www.academia.edu/43656511/Woodwind_Trio_The_Passion_of_Alan_Turing_The_Gay_Mathematician_Who_Saved_14_Million_Lives_for_Oboe_Clarinet_in_B-flat_and_Bassoon_

At the age of 13 in 1926, Alan Turing (1912 – 1954) began high school at the Sherborne Boarding School in Britain. Turing’s love for knowledge and education, even at a young age, was so much that, despite the 1926 General Strike, which effectively shut down the country’s railroad systems and prevented Turing from getting to school, Turing was so determined to attend that he rode his bicycle unaccompanied overnight for 60 miles to get to Sherborne and promptly start his education. His passion for learning and discovery would persist for the next and last 28 years of his life.

At Sherborne, Turing formed a significant friendship with his fellow classmate, Christopher Morcom (1911-1930), who is often described as Turning’s “first love.” This first love - its companionship of the mind, compassion for the spirit, and tragic end - would inform the fervor of Turing’s work for the rest of his life. Morcom was the one student at Sherborne with whom Turing felt most himself and could speak freely and equally about his thoughts on mathematics and science, which were prodigious for one so young, having already taught himself advanced mathematics well beyond calculus as well as read and annotated Einstein’s Essays on Special and General Relativity before the age of 16. Morcom and Turing spent many of their holidays together and were inseparable. Tragically, Morcom died very suddenly in 1930, having contracted bovine tuberculosis. Turing was 18. 

Turing was significantly heartbroken but coped with his grief by working more fastidiously on those studies and projects that he had shared with Morcom. In an archived letter Turing wrote to Morcom’s mother:

“I am sure I could not have found anywhere another companion so brilliant and yet so charming and unconceited. I regarded my interest in my work, and in such things as astronomy (to which he introduced me) as something to be shared with him and I think he felt a little the same about me ... I know I must put as much energy if not as much interest into my work as if he were alive, because that is what he would like me to do.”

The first movement of this Passion, The Young Love of Christopher Morcom, is in memory of this love story: an ebullient, passionate, cerebral, and possibly forbidden physical love that was cut too short but ultimately inspired a life of world changing work from Turing.

Woodwind Trio: The Passion of Alan Turing - 1. The Young Love of Christopher Morcom

For a complete score see: https://www.academia.edu/43656511/Woodwind_Trio_The_Passion_of_Alan_Turing_The_Gay_Mathematician_Who_Saved_14_Million_Lives_for_Oboe_Clarinet_in_B-flat_and_Bassoon_

In 1936, Turing published his first seminal paper: "On Computable Numbers." In this paper, Turing reformulated Kurt Gödel's 1931 results on the limits of proof and computation, replacing Gödel's universal arithmetic-based formal language with the formal and simple hypothetical devices that became known as “Turing machines,” essentially laying the ground work for what would become the modern computer, as recognized by seminal mathematician and computer scientist John von Neumann  To this day, Turing machines are a central object of study in the theory of computation. Turing was 24 years old.

Beginning in September of 1938, Turing worked part-time with the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), the British codebreaking organization. His primary project was to decipher the German NAZI war code machine, called “Enigma.”

While at Bletchley Park’s Cypher research Lab, Turing had a reputation for eccentricity. He was known to his colleagues as "Prof" and his treatise on Enigma was known as the "Prof's Book.” This book of Turing’s various attempts to decipher the NAZI code machine’s mechanisms, sometimes employing his own base-36 system of numbers, became the central treatise and textbook to ultimately design the device that would significantly help end the Second World War on the European Stage.  The second movement, Prof’s Book and the Enigma Machine, attempts to signify one of Turing’s more simple base 36 deciphering algorithms. While the interior perpetual augmentation canon is simply a whimsical representation of the mathematical mind of Turing at work, the outer portions of the movement compress a simple base-36 numerical algorithm to a base-12 pitch and rhythm transformation that slowly changes the opening material from an atonal confusion to a delicate and pristine modal construct.

Woodwind Trio: The Passion of Alan Turing - 2. Profs Book and the Enigma Machine

For a complete score see: https://www.academia.edu/43656511/Woodwind_Trio_The_Passion_of_Alan_Turing_The_Gay_Mathematician_Who_Saved_14_Million_Lives_for_Oboe_Clarinet_in_B-flat_and_Bassoon_

The machine that Turing was instrumental in designing and which would ultimately crack Enigma was called, “the Bombe.” The Bombe, with an enhancement suggested by mathematician Gordon Welchman, became the primary rapid automated tool used decrypt and counter NAZI Enigma-enciphered messages. The machine immeasurably changed the course of the war. Today, Turing is recognized as having played a crucial role in cracking intercepted coded messages that enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many crucial engagements, and in so doing helped win the war for the Allied Powers. Mathematicians, statisticians, historians, and biographers have reasonably estimated that Turing’s work shortened the war in Europe by more than two years and saved over 14 million lives on both sides of the conflict. The third movement, The Bombe that Broke Enigma, is a musical fantasia that attempts to capture the sounds and processes of trial and error in creating one of the first electronic computers to decipher life-altering wartime messages. There are many starts and stops, changes in speed and texture, builds and decays, steps forwards and steps back, to ultimately arrive at the surprising and triumphant end of cracking the code of Enigma, presaged in the prior movement via the “Enigma Canon.”

After the war, Turing’s work did not end or diminish in importance. He worked on the first commercial computers in the late 1940s as well as began to tackle the question of artificial intelligence. He returned to one of his old passions, mathematical biology, wherein he outlined in a series of papers the first mathematical basis for biological processes, later incorporated into the study of the human genome and genetics generally, effectively founding a completely new field of mathematics essential to medical research today.

Woodwind Trio: The Passion of Alan Turing - 3. The Bombe that Broke Enigma

For a complete score see: https://www.academia.edu/43656511/Woodwind_Trio_The_Passion_of_Alan_Turing_The_Gay_Mathematician_Who_Saved_14_Million_Lives_for_Oboe_Clarinet_in_B-flat_and_Bassoon_

On 23 January 1952, Turing's house was burgled. Turing reported the crime to the police. During the investigation, he acknowledged that he was living with another man, with whom he was having sexual relations. Homosexual acts were criminal offences in the United Kingdom at that time, so, rather than continue the investigation of the burglary, the police arrested Turing and his lover and charged both with "gross indecency," one of Britain’s sodomy laws of the time. 

The case of The Queen vs. Turing and Murray was brought to trial on 31 March 1952. Turing was convicted and given the options of imprisonment or probation, for which he would undergo chemical sterilization and hormonal “therapy” designed to “cure” him of his homosexuality and “overactive” libido. He accepted the option of “therapy” so that he could continue his work on computers, artificial intelligence, and mathematical biology. The chemical injections persisted for the course of one year, rendering Turing impotent and likely severely depressed, given his subsequent suicide following this year of “treatment.” 

On 8 June 1954, Turing's housekeeper found him dead at the age of 41; he had died the previous day by cyanide poisoning. When his body was discovered, an apple lay half-eaten beside his bed, and although the apple was not tested for cyanide due to the lackadaisical treatment of his death by authorities, it has been speculated that this was the means by which Turing had consumed the fatal dose. Many biographers now think that Turing was re-enacting the death scene from the Walt Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), his proclaimed favorite fairy tale.

He was cremated without ceremony and without honors. The man that should have been a national and world hero, the one whose mind saved millions of lives and arguably began our computer age was ignored and forgotten by most for decades due to his homosexuality. It is heartening that in the past decades of the 21st century, Turing is finally being recognized for his work. Through the efforts of many gay and allied politicians, mathematicians, and scientists Turing was given a posthumous pardon for his “crimes” and an official apology from the British government. In September 2016, the British government announced its intention to expand Turing’s retroactive exoneration to other men and women convicted of similar historical indecency offences, in what is now described as the "Alan Turing Law,". which to date has given pardons to over 75,000 other gay and lesbian people adversely effected by the past sodomy laws of the United Kingdom. Thus, with the final movement of this Passion, We Give Thanks to the One Who Saved 14 Million Lives, I wish to honor Turing and his work with a moving canon – poetic and cerebral – and recognize that many of us are here today because his work saved so many lives.

Jordan Alexander Key

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