Read by the Juilliard Orchestra, conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky.
Are we in sync? Maybe we can check with a metronome.
Of course, even if our hearts were beating at the exact same speed, they could be offset. Are we really synchronized? Us humans seem to have this ability (sometimes) to play/work together – adjust ourselves to match each other, while the metronomes will happily march off at their own speed.
It’s a fairly simple metaphor. We are the people, and the metronomes are the machines. Right? The metronome is steady, uncaring, precise; while we push and pull our speed, and add all that feEeeEling.
Or is it? We’re still the ones that start the metronomes, stop them, and adjust them. If one metronome is a rigid rhythmic grid, 20 of them at different speeds dissolves that grid into a texture, where pulse disappears into slow, fluid oscillations – like breaths. Put metronomes together and they can do things we never could without them. Maybe they’re more “human” than we give them credit for.
Of course, with people, working together is complicated. When one of us plays solo, we often feel like we have so much more freedom to be expressive, but as soon as we are part of a collective, we have to adapt and synchronize with them. Perhaps the metronome will be the mirror of our heartbeats today.
This is the story of the orchestra, the metronome, and what happens when one tries to be like the other. Will they get along?
Specific instrumentation details are on the second page of the score.
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