Bang on a Can

My pieces are all narratives, not surface narratives that tell you what you are supposed to hear, but deeper narratives that tell you how things are made. My titles, as odd as they may be, are indications of what the narrative idea is that controls the formal relationships between the instruments. The Anvil Chorus is about blacksmithing. In the Middle Ages, blacksmithing was the loudest sound in the world. For large projects, all these people would pound on a single piece of metal, and they invented melodies to control hammering patterns so they could stay out of each other's way and not beat each other up. I let the percussionist choose different sorts of junk metals, and then a "rhythmic melody" controls all the rhythmic patterns.