Steampunk by DAVID BRUCE

I first came across the word steampunk when a friend introduced to me as such the collection of strangely futuristic lights, clocks and other objects that he'd fashioned out of copper pipes and other scrap materials. As a fan of home-made instruments it was a form of creativity that instantly appealed to me. I later discovered that steampunk was originally a science fiction genre but has gone on to become a quite recognised form of design, fashion and sub-culture. It centres on a kind of 'alternative history' - an alternative universe which looks a lot like technologically- advanced Victorian England, only one where electricity never surfaced and everything is steam-powered. Brass, copper and wood feature prominently and complicated mechanical spaghetti creates unfeasibly steam-powered devices like watches, laptops, x-ray machines, and so on. Strange forms of transport including zeppelins or futuristic steam-powered cars dominate often quite dystopian high-rise cityscapes.

When Carnegie Hall offered me this commission based around the Beethoven Septet line-up (though I added an oboe to mine in the end), the horn and bassoon immediately stood out to me as defining colours of the group and somehow a connection formed between them and the images of the steampunk world. I think above all it was the French horn with its crazy complicated brass plumbing, making it about as iconic a steampunk instrument as you could hope for; but similarly the bassoon, the bass clarinet and the cor anglais each have the distinct air of an eccentric Victorian gentleman, the product of a particular kind of obsession. It seemed like a line-up from a steampunk cartoon. To stretch the analogy a little further than I probably should, you could see Classical Music itself as a kind of steampunk music. It's one of the very few areas in music performance where unamplified, non-electronic sound is still the norm. The sound may not be steam-powered, but it is produced by muscles and breath alone and for me that's one of its major selling points. There is something essential for me about the direct connection of live unamplified sound.

Steampunk is in 5 movements. The brief opening movement has wild fanfares on clarinet and french horn and is followed by a dark, brooding passacaglia. The third lyrical movement was inspired by the 'armillary sphere', a model of the celestial sphere often found in steampunk design, and I hope the movement captures a sense of a mysterious spiralling celestial mechanism. The fourth movement is much more light-hearted and seems to hint at strange ticking clocks. The final movement starts with a desolate stillness, but gradually and relentlessly - indeed, as if powered by steam - builds up speed until arriving at a break-neck denouement.

David Bruce, November 2010