Pecking Orders
for soprano and ensemble (2024)
- Duration 17’30''
- Instrumentation soprano, clarinet/bass clarinet, harp, piano, 1 percussionist, violin and cello
- written for Dal Niente
Program Notes
While writing Pecking Orders for Ensemble Dal Niente, I started to think about different types of orders: orders in our society, orders of historical events, chemical elements, and the stages of grief. I then asked AI questions about pecking orders. The results I received were about chickens, humans, the arts and music, high school… the pecking orders the AI produced were quite ridiculous. AI often comes up with orders that may sound obviously absurd, but sometimes they are not as unreasonable as the orders we humans create for ourselves.
Sometimes the music reflects the text, and sometimes it contradicts it. The soprano has a beautiful vocalise at the beginning of the piece, which reinforces the AI's assertion that the voice is the most divine in the music pecking order. But later in the piece, the soprano reveals various distorted and sometimes incomprehensible aspects of herself, which supports ideas of alternate pecking orders.
The text begins with chicken pecking orders, then moves on to music, art, high school, and society as a whole. Later, it returns to the idea of how humans make chickens submit to the order. This journey—from chicken to human and back to the chicken—casts the soprano as an in-between character. She has space to explore her emotional range throughout the piece and to transcend the human.
– Wang Lu