RIP: 1800 and Counting by Ben Wahlund

A commission for Mr. Brandon Estes during the fall of 2005, Rip reflects my concern regarding a passing statement by a colleague;”Music is a temporal art. That is, music is an art form subject to experience only during a given amount of time”. It is my contention that music is only subject to time as much as an ice sculpture is subject to time before melting – both passing experiences, subject to an environment that is changing at any given moment. In fact, sculpture as a whole, then, is subject to time – as is painting, pottery, architecture and the sort. Just ask anyone whose charge it is to preserve our culture’s decaying greats. So, even though people generally consider music to be intangible, I have come to accept that my experience with music is just as “tangible” as an experience with any other art form. Rip is my best representation of how music sometimes speaks to me this way – a compounding flurry of activity found in the catalyst of a most simple window of time. For me, it is almost like someone rips the time/space continuum and lets me have a peek.

As of last week, 1,800 Americans have died in Iraq since the U.S. declared war in the area. I have wondered from time to time what it would be like to die. The closest I have come has been a car crash or a couple of construction accidents. At the time, it seemed like an eternity before I could move on, out of danger, but in retrospect it was merely a matter of seconds – maybe even split seconds. I suspect that this is what it is like to die. It must seem like an eternity while you look your life in the eyes. Rip: 1800 and Counting is a tribute to the fallen soldiers in Iraq, with a musical goal of presenting this fore mentioned dichotomy – a compounding flurry of activity found in the catalyst of a most simple window of time. –An almost holy time and place, ripped into existence, much like the fate of the 1800. There are one thousand and eight hundred notes in this solo.