Adam Silverman: Elegy for the Earth

“Whale Song” is a paean to great beasts that washed ashore in California when they were unable to feed, and broadly a lament for all species facing unsustainable conditions that threaten their survival. Silverman’s score is in a slow triple meter, capturing the reverence for the majestic animals and a tender sadness at their suffering.

Pointed repeated chants of “Monsanto” open “Bee Death,” an indictment of the infamous global agrochemical company. Silverman builds a multi-layered delay effect in the ensemble, repeating and fading away the company's name. Bee buzzing effects create an onomatopoeic effect and timbral contrast, spatialized around the ensemble in this brief, stinging movement.

“Fire Water/Fracking” describes a harrowing incident of a child being burned by a malfunctioning faucet spewing methane. Once again, Silverman builds intensity and anticipation with text repetition, rotating the words “the kitchen spigot” in several metric and motivic permutations while a disembodied melody dispassionately sets the impending scene. Silverman uses a non-pitched effect again to enhance the effect, notating a whooshing sound to evoke a painful exploding flame. An ominous unison final phrase asks, “how can she understand methane?”

The longest movement in the piece, “The New Doldrums," is a lush chorale setting that meditates on industry’s insatiable appetite and the resultant historic injustices, from the slave trade to recent oceanic pollution. A lilting, resigned refrain is heard on the words, “commerce, commerce, always the tale of money, and those who make it, destroying the world.”

“Anthropocene” incorporates lively, hocketed entrances that conjure the vibrant diversity of the animal kingdom, in an entreaty to love the richness of the biological world. The movement’s extroversion stands in contrast to much of the rest of the piece, suggesting the inexorable progress of the earth and its inhabitants, even as humanity and other species may suffer irreparably as a result of human activity.

“Of Fossil Fuels” tackles one of the overlooked components of our energy debate, that fossil fuels are in fact the remnants of organic material from centuries past. Silverman’s setting is an admonishment, a haunting message to leave the “monsters buried deep within the earth” alone. The arresting opening of the movement features short phrases divided by charged silences, before the chorus advises to “leave them there.” In the subsequent section, we hear spoken recitation of extinct dinosaur species over the same forceful sung directives, first in the men’s voices with soaring lines in the women’s voices, and then with the voices switched. “Deep in the earth” is heard in a multi-layered texture before a final warning to cease drilling, or risk “losing all the songs in the earth.”

“World on Fire” depicts a vantage point of the Earth from space, having lost its verdant glow. Silverman writes powerful polytonal sonorities that capture both the wonder of gazing upon the cosmos but also the peril of its ongoing degradation. It is a fitting close to this tribute to our planet, serving both as an earnest expression of awe and an urgent warning.

– Dan Lippel