Symphony No. 1 'Beyond Anthropocene'

ensemble 2.2.2.2, 4.3.3.1, timp. + 3, hp., strings
written spr. 2025
duration 20 minutes

Commissioned by David Alan Miller and the Albany Symphony for the 2025 American Music Festival

program notes

In March 2024, the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) voted to reject recognizing the ‘Anthropocene’ as a geologic epoch. The proposed ‘Anthropocene,’ or the “age of humans,” was meant to be a scientific acknowledgement of the indelible impact humanity has left on the environment, but its rejection by the IUGS was not at all a denial of the very present, very measurable effects of human-led climate change. Rather, their decision reflects the reality that anthropogenic transformation is pervasive in every part of the planet’s biosphere, and not just in its geology. What with widespread deforestation to exorbitant carbon emissions, confining the scientific definition of the Anthropocene to the realm of the purely geological would have been frustratingly reductive. 

The term, nonetheless, lives on in environmental discourse, as does the ever-important question of what era we as a species can be striving toward beyond the Anthropocene. I sought to explore the background, framing, and answers to that question in this symphony. The piece examines our relationship to the planet in three movements: I. Terra, II. Industry, and III. Solastalgia. Movement 1 lays out a vast, uncertain landscape, as if beholding the grandeur of the world around us for the first time. A thudding five-note theme is introduced in the lowest register, gradually tightening in its resolve over the course of the movement. The music grows and takes on a darkly tragic quality, before building in motion into the second movement. The piece enters a world of rushing, insistent motion, imitating the ravenous development the world saw at the onset of unmitigated industrialization. Building to a furor, the piece collapses into the final movement - ‘solastalgia,’ named for a recently coined term referring to climate anxiety. The last movement’s development is ambiguous - there are fleeting dreams of beauty, followed by a gathering sense of inevitability - though toward what, exactly, is open to interpretation. 

For the last few centuries, we have treated the Earth as a canvas on which we could impose our will. These next decades will be crucial in determining a new way forward. Scholars and activists have posited several possible futures, with the ‘Symbiocene’ being, perhaps, the most optimistic: a proposed era where humanity lives in balance with nature, taking only what is needed, giving back in equal proportion. It might feel like a far off dream, but it may well be a necessity. 

I owe so much gratitude to David Alan Miller and the Albany Symphony for commissioning, premiering, and recording this work. I put a lot of myself into it, and I am grateful for such generous collaborators.