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Lag
for orchestra
3.3.3.3. 4.3.3.1. 2perc. timp. strings
commissioned by BBC Radio 3 for BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Tectonics Festival
premièred by Ilan Volkov
Lag refers to the uncanny glitches we experience in digital technology when a user’s physical actions undergo a delay before they are digitally realised. For example, moving your computer mouse and seeing the cursor glide on screen slower than the ‘real time’ movement of your hand.
This effect relates to Lag’s temporal uncertainty. It is a 15’ piece that builds a static yet kinetic form which shuns linear narratives in favour of music that lags, stretches back and forth, or simply bends around itself. One’s expectation of how things may unfold is gently confounded by this notion of ‘lag’, in both obvious and imperceptible ways.
Rather than using the orchestra as a single unified force, it is broken up into a collection of smaller ensembles, many of which perform independently of the conductor’s omnipresent beat. These individual groups gently act at their own pace, the effect of which may feel similar to observing a Petri dish of autonomous microrganisms, each one containing a canon of sorts, or perhaps guided towards a sense of inexact reoccurence.