Threshold - Grade 3.5 - Concert Band - Printed Version
Threshold is a Grade 3.5 piece for Concert band that explores the concept of gravitational time dilation through changing concepts of time while maintaining a steady pulse throughout. It is written for an extensive percussion section with the option to expand the metallic aleatoric sounds beyond the percussion section.
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“Threshold” was commissioned for the Brazos High School Band, Wallis, Texas, Billy Meré, Director.
The idea for “Threshold” came as a result of two things. An episode of Doctor Who and my love of black holes. I used to discuss black hole theory with friends when I was in high school. Astrophysics was something I always loved, even if I didn’t totally get it all. Then there was that episode of Doctor who where they were on this massive space ship flying away from a black hole. Because of gravitational time dilation, the time on the part of the spaceship that was closer to the black hole was moving slower than the part away from it.
How are either of these related to “Threshold”? Well because of loving thinking about astrophysics, I was thinking about that episode off and on for weeks after finishing my rewatch of Doctor Who. When Billy asked me to write a piece, I wasn’t sure what it was going to be about, but then it clicked. What if I write a piece about how time slows as you approach a black hole. I could take a theme and play with it through manipulation of time signatures. The quarter note could always stay the same, but the phrase would get longer.
The original plan was for the entire piece to be a huge slow down, but I had a hard time thinking of how I could make that work over the course of a 5 minute band piece. (But maybe I will revisit that idea some day!) So instead I decided to spend the piece toying with time. Stretch it, shrink it, fracture it, throw it out the window, whatever I wanted!