Time Poem

Program Note

Celebrating Vanderbilt University’s sesquicentennial, the tempo is the equivalent of 150 quarter notes per minute, with the entire piece consisting of 150 bars, one for each year from 1873-2023, and an additional bar for its 2024 premiere. The feeling of the push and pull of time comes from its sequence of time signatures of 2, 3, 5, and 5—the mathematical prime factors of 150—expanding and contracting into measures of eighth note-, quarter note-, and whole note units. The first bar of the movement is numbered 1873, and from there, the measures roughly follow some of the historical events forming the larger backdrop of Vanderbilt’s existence—major wars, assassinations, significant milestones, etc. Along the way there is a literal “element of surprise” in the form of the loud punctuation from Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Surprise Symphony” as well as a sense of renewal embodied in the appearance of a single note from Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird. The past may or may not be prelude, but whatever it is, every ending is also a beginning, and the piece concludes with a “warm up,” tuning in to whatever is still to come. [Program note from the premiere].

Two pages excerpted from Mvt. III, “Time Poem,” Crescere Aude
Stan Link
Courtesy of Stan Link