SKU: HL.1122017

ISBN 9781705181744. UPC: 196288108986.

A Good Understanding (2005) was written for Tim Brown and the choir of Clare College, Cambridge with the generous cooperation of John Scott and the Boys of Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue. A Good Understanding, with texts culled from two psalms, is designed to share a program with Rutter's expansive and expressive Mass of the Children. The piece unfolds episodically short choral phrases alternating with longer instrumental interludes. The first half of the text is typical psaltry praise-making: outlining agreements, explaining the rules; the music is, accordingly, severe but practical. The second half of the text begins, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom/a good understanding have all they that do his commandments.?I find the idea of a good understanding?to be an especially exciting reward for following the rules; the boys sing pulsed syllables and long descants to celebrate the covenant while the choir sings a lilting, repetitive refrain. (Psalm 111, 10). - Nico Muhly.

SKU: HL.276513

UPC: 888680989774. 12x16.5 inches.

“Sentences is a thirty-minute meditation, in collaboration with Adam Gopnik, on several episodes drawn from the life and work of Alan Turing. Turing lived, in a sense, many different lives, but at the heart of his work was, I think, a very musical set of anxieties. Even the idea of code-breaking is inherently musical; the French for score-reading is déchiffrage: deciphering. His wartime work on the Enigma code translated, later in life, to a more nuanced relationship to code in the form of a primitive but emotionally (and philosophically) complicated artificial intelligence. The piece uses a single voice not to speak necessarily as Turing, but as a guide through these various episodes.

I've always felt that the question of sentient computers is wildly emotional: we anthropomorphise the Mars Rover, imagining its solitude on that dusty planet. Any act of communication in which the second person is unseen can be a one-way conversation. An email, sent, can never be returned - did it arrive or did it not?-', or a text message can be delivered but never read. The thrill of a fast response is immediately tempered with the harsh but empty rudeness of an out-of-office reply. Anybody who has made a condolence phone call only to hear the voice of the deceased on the outgoing answering machine message knows the complexities of what could be a simple binary communication.” –Nico Muhly.

SKU: HL.14048165

UPC: 840126953343. 12.0x16.25x0.076 inches. English.

By All Means is a work for Large Ensemble by Nico Muhly. Commissioned by the Juilliard School, New York and the Royal Academy of Music, London, a full performance lasts around 9 minutes. Spiral bound.