Third movement, menuetto: allegro molto e vivace, from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21
Conducted by Paul Henry Smith. Recorded November 12, 2008.

Second movement, andante cantabile con moto, from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21
Conducted by Paul Henry Smith. Recorded September 27, 2008.

Finale from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21
Conducted by Paul Henry Smith. Recorded September 12, 2008.

The Fauxharmonic Orchestra has begun a massive project to perform all nine Beethoven symphonies. This may well be the first digital orchestra performance of the symphonies.

About the winning composition

Listen to the Fauxharmonic Orchestra performance: A Screaming Comes Across the Sky

“A Screaming Comes Across the Sky” was commissioned by the Immanuel and Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival for its “New Texas Overtures” season in 2005. The title of the piece is the first sentence from Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow. The piece was premiered in 2005. One reviewer of that performance wrote:

David Heuser’s ‘A Screaming Comes Across the Sky’ was a shot-in-the-arm beginning. … Heuser’s music certainly matched the title through its intense, driving rhythms and thunderclap-loud outbursts. This was all-American music at its most dynamic and visceral. Yet the piece by the University of Texas-San Antonio composer was well-crafted and smartly orchestrated … The music continually engaged mind and body as it careened along.

— Houston Chronicle (July 2005)

About the composer

David Heuser is associate professor of theory, composition, and electronic music at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Heuser’s music has been performed by various groups and individuals and on festivals and conferences throughout the US and abroad. He has won a variety of awards, grants and commissions including an ASCAP Young Composer Award, many ASCAP Standard Grants, a First Music commission from the New York Youth Symphony, an Immanuel and Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival “New Texas Overture” Commission, and the Delius Composition Contest Chamber Music Award.

More about David Heuser

Honorable Mentions

The following outstanding compositions were selected by the judges for hornorable mention:

About the contest

The Fauxharmonic Orchestra’s international composition contest was established in 2005 to help foster new orchestral composition, and to showcase digital orchestral performance. The contest winner receives a $1,200 prize and a recorded performance by the Fauxharmonic Orchestra.

This year’s contest involved eighty-six entries by composers from the US, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Canada. Judges for the 2006 contest were:

Emily Doolittle, composer (bio)

Markand Thakar, Music Director of the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra and the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra; Co-director of the graduate program in orchestral conducting at the Peabody Conservatory of Music (bio)

Herb Tucmandl, CEO and Founder, Vienna Symphonic Library, the world’s pre-eminent maker of digital orchestral instruments and performance systems (bio)

Paul Henry Smith, Music Director of the Fauxharmonic Orchestra, a digital orchestra ensemble devoted to producing recordings of orchestral music, new and old, of the highest artistic caliber.

Digital thoughts — Paul Lansky

For the past fifty years computers have played a role in musical composition. The significant recent change is that the technology has now moved out of composition studios and into the performer’s hands.

Clearly the best digital orchestral performances already surpass bad or even mediocre live performances. It’s only going to be a short time before they can equal, and surpass, the best orchestral recordings. But will they ever be able to deliver a musical experience as good as the best live orchestra performances?

Perhaps, if you compare the rate at which digital orchestral performances are improving to the rate at which live orchestra performances are improving, you might answer, “yes, some day digital musical performances will be as good or better than the best live performances.” But what would it take for that to happen? Much better digital instruments, for one. And much better trained musicians to be able to play these instruments.

What about the spontaneous aspect of live performance? Obviously that is already lacking in every single recording … but could it possibly be re-introduced into a live digital orchestra performance? Of course it could. And of course it will take a lot of time and work to develop that to the point of being capable of delivering the most superlative musical experience. After all, the symphony orchestra didn’t just emerge over night.

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