A positive feedback loop is a cycle in which a change in a given direction causes additional change in the same direction. Climate scientists warn that the process of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is becoming a positive feedback loop, one in which each warming of the planet sparks other factors that further warm the planet.

In one case, melting subarctic permafrost layers melt, releasing more and more methane into the atmosphere. As the methane-rich atmosphere traps more heat, the planet becomes warmer, melting more permafrost layers. This further thickens the atmosphere, which melts even more ice. 

The terrifying reality is that the climate crisis may spiral out of control, reaching a point of no return, in which irreversible damage has afflicted the earth, and humanity is utterly doomed.

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The primary motive in this piece became lodged in my brain. Its repetition in my mind was so absurdly prominent that the notes would literally wake me up at night. “Wake up, wake up,” it seemed to scream. As I wrote this piece, the taunting, somewhat haughty motive wove itself in, so ironically contrasting the gravity of the climate crisis. 

Over and over the motive spirals out of control in positive feedback loop after positive feedback loop. It is hurled between the instruments, constantly chopped and manipulated and hidden, but its presence throughout the piece is undeniable. 

The piece is formed from layers of feedback loops. Most apparently, each acceleration of the motive sparks another faster acceleration of the motive, which sparks yet another more absurd gesture… the process continues until it can no longer be furthered. 

Its disintegration is often denoted by a loud piano slam, a sonic cleanser of sorts (or, if you prefer, the end of humanity). More subtly, each section of the piece forms a greater positive feedback loop of its own: Each repetition cycle is faster and more anxious than the next, giving the piece a taut, unsettling structure that conveys the danger of our current climate crisis.

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This piece can do nothing to mitigate the momentous danger of climate change to our planet and our species. It can do nothing to quell the emergency that is still downplayed, disregarded or ignored by a significant part of the world’s population. 

But I hope that, to anyone who listens, it will carry the same message that its theme did to me in the dead of night: Wake up, wake up.

Positive Feedback Loop - Audio - Liam Cummins

The word overlooking has two distinct meanings. First, it connotes a vantage point from a high place: An outcropping overlooking a valley, a window overlooking a city. Second, it connotes failure to notice something: Despite the warnings, the side effects went overlooked.

This project was born out of great joy — the joy of collaborative music making. The process began at National YoungArts Week 2022, and while planning and composing, I was elated. As I began writing, I even imagined it literally: Here I was, a musical architect before pages and pages of blank staff paper, able to manipulate them with any notes I wanted to design the sounds I desired. I was high above the notes, overlooking this musical universe.

The climate crisis, perhaps the antithesis of joy, was created from constant negligence — from overlooking. Overlooking the effects of our actions on our environment has thrust our species into an immeasurably dire situation where our earth as we know it, within a mere few generations, may cease to exist.

This piece considers the harsh realities facing the climate crisis, and asks how we might continue to find joy even among our rapidly degrading ecosystems.

Overlooking – Excerpts (Movements 1 & 3)

Schubert’s B-flat major piano sonata (D.960) moves me in a way that few other pieces do. In the inevitable moments of despair and dejection that life brings, I turn to that piece and find solace in its wistful beauty. 

In writing this piano trio, I have once again turned to Schubert’s sonata, planning the form of my piece around its opening theme. This piece juxtaposes elements of Schubert’s melody against a harsher idiom, creating two different worlds that expand and contract, intertwine and entangle in rhapsodic episodes of tension and release. 

The piece begins with a series of foreboding rumbles – also originating from Schubert’s sonata – that lead to a ferocious peak, eventually giving way to a pounding piano ostinato and a hint at Schubert’s theme. Then a simple melody emerges against a held violin note. The melody grows and morphs, slowly becoming lush and harmonically richer – but it soon dwindles to a pianissimo, finally settling on an augmented sixth chord (from the Schubert), which is for now left unresolved. 

The rumbling sound-world of the beginning of the piece returns, punctuated by explosive interjections. Frequently, the augmented sixth chord returns, never resolving as it does in the Schubert. The murky texture grows into an accelerating pattern and increases in tension until the melody from earlier returns, this time boldly in the piano. The pounding ostinato in the piano reemerges and the music reaches an explosive peak. The augmented sixth chord – now fortissimo – is flung around the ensemble, finally cataclysmically resolving to B-flat major cadential 6/4 chord – just like the Schubert. A massive cluster-chord in the piano follows. 

Out of the murk, the original Schubert quotation slowly emerges, finally in its original form.
As the piano quiets, the strings repeat the melody one last time, then fade away.

Overlooking – Excerpts (Movements 1 & 3)

Liam Cummins

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