This product contains the score, parts, and the live electronics file. 
 
Live electronics are performed using VCV Rack 2. 
 
Fritz Lang’s 1927 expressionist silent film Metropolis has always been an inspiration to me in the way that it integrates industrialization and technology into human life. In the film, there are three tiers of society (analogous to Dante’s depictions of Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell) with the Eden-like garden being a place of natural beauty while the city’s lowest tier is a machine hall where machines are portrayed by combining dangerous, industrial machines with biblical imagery. The film portrays technology and industrialization as a sort of sacrificial alter to which the lower class is fed without ever reaping the benefits of its creation or use. The film ends however on a hopeful note as Freder joins the different social classes, ending with the message that “the mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart.” In composing this piece, I wanted to represent that mediation by imagining Lang’s depiction of the garden as a utopian mix of the electric and the organic that was accessible to all, rather than partitioned for an elite few. I intended for the use of electronic components to this piece to augment the organic, acoustic sound of the ensemble, hoping to create beautiful soundscapes while letting individual voices of the ensemble emerge and recede. I hope that The Beautiful Electric conjures images of the rise and fall of the tides, lights twinkling across a city skyline, birds chirping, trains rushing past, and rain gently falling on the windows.