Wave of Apophis
Vocals: Lizzie Lyon
‘Wave of Apophis’ is a 42 minute programmatic work for Orchestra and CPU, based on the flight and impact of the asteroid ‘Apophis’, (named after the Egyptian god of chaos) and its subsequent massive tsunami. Initially, the asteroid was projected to have a 3% probability of hitting earth April 13, Friday, 2029. but due to widespread panic, NASA later changed their prognostication to a very slight chance. Following the more pessimistic route, this piece chronicles the asteroid’s journey through space ( movement 1), hitting the ocean west of Puerto Rico (as prophesied by Ethan Rodriguez) and sending a tsunami up the east coast (movement 2) and inevitably destroying all the seaboard cities (movement 3). {For structure’s sake, the piece focusses on three east coast cities}.
The music’s melodic and motivic material is derived from another Katy Perry song, ‘Tsunami’, this time more for its 80s influence ( SOS Band ) and it’s uncharacteristically thick texture. Other borrowed material includes heavy use of Debussy’s ‘La Mer’ , an accidental Puccini quote, as well as a brief quote from Rossini’s ‘William Tell’ and ‘Wipe Out” by the Surfaris.
The piece is built harmonically around The C double harmonic major, building the harmonic progression from the vertically ordering of the scale around an ascending root .This led me to a 64 chord chord progression which is layered 3 times by its double, quadruple and octuple brethren. This 64 chords chord progression and it’s 3 layers and inversion became the harmonic ursatz for all three movement as well as being ubiquitous throughout the surface of the piece. The harmonies in the middle(slow) movement moves to the relative major for a contrasting, more pastoral feel. All modulations throughout are only to Eb, F# and A always circulating back to C.
Embedded in the the harmonic ursatz, the tempo structure is closely linked to the ideal of a tonic tempo and its subdominant (dotted eighth), and its dominant tempo ( triplet). These tempos make up a set grid that I reuse exactly in all 3 movements (14 mins each). Every section’s tempo entails a metric modulation which dictates the rhythm in the music to create a kind of amorphic, swirling force characterized by the astroid and wave themselves.
Finally the instrumentation is for full orchestra, including a large percussion section, and 200 tracks of electronic reinforcements. The score is currently being completed.
MC Maguire March 2021
Wave of Apophis Audio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuHzT_5Yfps
Reviews
March 2021
youtube review
(Robert Meehan)- Been buying your discs since Robert Carl did the review of your first disc in Fanfare. Love the album with Samarra “Can’t Move”. This is just amazing., a coherent wall of sound to make Phil Spector envious. Is there an orchestra waiting for the completed score?
