What's Going On? (score & parts) - WW5

What's Going On? (2018)
for woodwind quintet: flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon
by John Steinmetz (b.1951) American composer, bassoonist, writer, satirist, speaker

Commissioned by Mill Ave Chamber Players and a consortium of ensembles and individuals.

Duration: just over 12 minutes, plus time between movements.

FROM THE COMPOSER:

Ever since arriving on this planet, I have been trying to figure out what’s going on. I have often been baffled and confused about how the world works, what others are up to, and why I react as I do. Lately I have had trouble grasping that the way of life I was born into, a way of life that seems normal, is harming our habitat, making life harder for us and other species.

One of the ways I try to understand what’s going on is to write music. When I started composing this piece, I had concepts or images for three movements (three chapters). As the music developed, unexpected things happened. The piece ended up with four movements. The audience took over the ending.

The titles all came afterward, after the music, as I tried to figure out how to explain what’s going on here. But the titles and explanations are just ways of talking about the music, and one purpose of music is to go where words don’t. I love to hear about what people experience when they listen to music, so please let me know what happens as you listen. 

1. Background Radiance. Many traditions honor a radiant reality lying behind or beyond our everyday world. This is a musical imagining of that place, or of the radiance that can be glimpsed here in our world.

2. Inheritance. Recently people have been re-energizing indigenous cultural traditions—teaching native languages, recovering skills, and sharing knowledge and wisdom. This song-like music is a way of giving thanks for this work of restoration and dissemination, and for the resurgence of indigenous understandings about living harmoniously. 

3. Mystery. While I was composing, a musical idea escaped from the first movement and headed in a new direction. I tried to tend the musical energies, without any other image or idea. Let me know what meaning it carries for you.

4. Loss. During a chat with a scientist/professor, I asked how she handles knowing so much about ongoing damage to natural systems. She said, “Lately I have been thinking that an appropriate response is grieving.”

Many thanks to Mill Ave Chamber Players for inviting me to compose something for their tenth anniversary season, for organizing a consortium of wonderful people and ensembles to co-commission this piece, and for premiering the music and recording it. I am grateful to all the commissioners for their support and trust.