Lurgy

Lurgy can be performed with 8-x number of players. The conductor can choose to double everything with 16 players but can also choose to split some of the parts that have multiple instruments and only double select parts at louder moments with 12 players. The possibilities are almost limitless. Battery Percussion instrument needs will obviously change with addition of players. Keyboard Percussion instrument needs listed below will remain the same no matter how many players are used. The title LURGY refers to metallurgy (the science of metals) and liturgy: this work is a liturgy involving a whole bunch of metal, with ritualistic pattens, formal restraint, austere harmonic language, a final mystical ascension — and a good bit of wacky tongue-in-cheek along the way. The bells are symbolic: metal, drawn from the earth, formed through fire, then suspended between heaven and earth, so as to draw people’s attention upward. Ring the Heavens opens the work with a loose-form sequence of various textures, alternating with textures which particularly ring out (the loud proclamations) and others which ring around (passages that fold back on themselves; the movement as a whole folds back on itself). Slow Lurgy and Whirling Lurgy, with their intense focus on small gestures and brief duration, are the most ritualistic of the movements, with gestures that reflect the bodily, the earthly, the transient and temporary. Finally, Meta-Lurgy explores the extremes of virtuosity and sonic immensity before launching into a trance-like, eternal crescendo of sound, the infinite journey toward the unknowable.