Illinois State University professor and composer Martha Horst has been busy making music throughout the pandemic—a task complicated by the inability to get musicians together and hold in-person performances.
Horst’s latest piece is called “The Universe Remembers Gravitational Waves.” It features an unusual combination of harp, violin and viola.
Horst was asked to write the piece by the Grossman Ensemble at the University of Chicago. The project was a miniature, meaning it came with time constraints.
Horst said she was looking for a tight, formal structure and landed on the idea of a wave—a common structure in music.
“As I was working on it, I realized it wasn't a light wave or a water wave or something like that. I looked into the scientific literature and I came up with this concept of a gravitational wave,” she said. “The interesting thing about gravitational waves is as they move through us … the space time continuum, as they say, is actually altered by the process of that wave going through space.”
Horst said the composition tells a story that’s as much about memory as it is about energy and movement.
“It starts off with just one single note from the harp,” Horst said. “You can think of pebble rolling down a hill—that starts a process of gradual building. We reach the crest of the wave and, at that point, the harp does all sorts of glissandos. And then the second half of the piece is really a decrescendo of that energy. But in some ways … there's some sort of quality of memory and reminiscence. As I got to the second part of the piece, I think it gets a little bit sentimental.”
Horst said she never would have chosen the instruments included in this piece on her own. She was given a limited list of options from the Grossman Ensemble, and one stood out.
“We composers nowadays rarely get a chance to write for harp. I knew I wanted to write for harp and then I proposed adding strings, as the harp is really a string instrument,” Horst said. “I am glad I didn't have to write a piece for harp and saxophone, which was another possible choice.”
Horst said the writing process for this piece looked similar to other works she’s done with the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chicago Composers Consortium. But when it came to actually practicing and performing the piece, COVID-19, not surprisingly, added some hurdles.
The musicians—the Grossman Ensemble’s Kate Carter, Dominic Johnson and Ben Melsky—held rehearsals with masks. Horst participated via Zoom.
“The first time I heard the piece, I really almost cried because the sound quality on Zoom is really, really poor,” Horst said. “I just couldn't hear anything. And I said, ‘I see you guys moving, but I just really don't hear the harp at all.’ And so it was really an emotional experience to hear my music live, finally.”
Horst said live performances have been impacted, too. She said composers and musicians are trying all sorts of different ways of making music happen, including video concerts. But it’s not quite the same as sharing a room with the audience.
“It's kind of psychologically difficult to record music with the same amount of energy that you give a live performance,” Horst said. “There's always going to be something missing from that process, but it has been really wonderful to have my music being heard all across the country—and even the world.”
Horst’s next piece is for an ensemble in Iowa. It’s a large-scale composition reflecting on the end of the Trump administration. For more on Horst’s work, visit her website.
