songs for tenor and electronics
Allison Armerding, librettist
17’30″
composed 2015
premiered by tenor Constantine Pappas (Fresno, California)
Librettist’s Note
The figure of Nikola Tesla has captured public imagination in recent years. Recent biographies name him “the inventor of the electrical age” and “the man who invented the 20th century,” claiming also that he was the first futurist to envision the 21st century world we know today, a world connected by global wireless communication and handheld communication devices. In his autobiography, My Inventions, Nikola Tesla described the prodigious powers of observation, imagination, and obsessive focus that fueled his genius, explaining that he built and perfected his inventions with utmost detail in his mind before ever constructing or testing them. “When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination,” he wrote. “I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind...In this way I am able to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything. When I have gone so far as to embody in the invention every possible improvement I can think of and see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form this final product of my brain. Invariably my device works as I conceived that it should, and the experiment comes out exactly as I planned it.” While Tesla only managed to bring a fraction of his hundreds of ideas to “concrete form,” those he did complete revolutionized the modern world. This song cycle explores the mind of a man who saw so much more than most, and thus brought light to all.
– Allison Armerding