Murmuration 

PROGRAM NOTES

A murmuration is the remarkable phenomenon of a vast flock of starlings in flight—hundreds or thousands of individual birds sweeping, turning, dividing, and suddenly changing direction together. The patterns seem spontaneous and unpredictable, yet the flock retains an unmistakable sense of order, moving almost as though it were a single organism.

Murmuration grew from a similar interplay between spontaneity and order. In composing the work, Samuel J. Fettig deliberately stepped away from his usual reliance on clearly defined forms, symmetrical phrases, and predetermined musical architecture. Instead, he approached the piece much as he approaches jazz improvisation: allowing one idea to suggest the next, following an unexpected rhythmic gesture or instrumental color wherever it might lead, developing some ideas and abruptly giving way to others. The larger shape of the piece was discovered through the act of composing rather than established in advance.

The result is not randomness. Just as the individual movements within a murmuration somehow produce a coherent whole, the spontaneous gestures of the piece remain governed by musical instinct, tonal and harmonic relationships, recurring ideas, and the process of revision. Order emerges from spontaneity.

At times, the orchestra may even suggest the physical flight of the birds themselves: instrumental lines dart, gather, scatter, overlap, and rapidly change direction. But Murmuration is less a musical portrait of starlings than a metaphor for the creative process that produced the work—many individual impulses, each leading to another, eventually revealing a larger shape.

There is one further connection embedded in the title. The word murmuration is related to murmur, a low or indistinct sound. The piece begins almost imperceptibly, with a low drone and distant sonorities. From that initial murmur, motion gradually emerges, until many individual voices have gathered into one restless, changing orchestral whole.