Instrumentation

High Soprano
Electronics (Ableton Live)

Duration: 8m
Year of Composition: 2025

Perusal Score

Program Notes

babel was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, “The Library of Babel,” which depicts a universe-spanning library where each shelf houses books that contain every possible combination of letters, periods, commas, and spaces. Every book humans have ever written, every history (real, forgotten, and fictional), exists somewhere in the library. However, because of the near infinite number of letter-punctuation combinations, most of these books are filled with complete gibberish.

babel is a piece about searching for meaning. Writing it, I tried to imagine finding a book in the library of babel that contained some fragment of truth. The text is, like the library, mostly gibberish, but as the piece goes on, various phonemes begin to take precedence in the unfolding melody. Eventually, partial phrases emerge, and later, full stanzas of text; precious crystals of meaning buried deep within the music.

babel was composed for SJ Kirsch, and premiered at Vancouver Pro Musica’s 2025 Vox Electronica Concert.