Fear of Music: Bow Bells (2014) for solo orchestra chimes and soundscape

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Fear of Music: Bow Bells for solo orchestra chimes and soundscape was composed by Dr. Lee Hinkle in 2014 and received its world premiere performance in May 2014.

I have always been fascinated by the power of music; and more specifically the power music can have over the brain.

I had the idea for this piece when I read Dr. Oliver Sach's book Musicophilia. In the book, Dr. Sach's describes case studies of patients who suffer from strange medical afflictions related to music. One set of stories stuck with me when he described an affliction some of his patients had suffered from called "Fear of Music."

One of the patients who suffered from Fear of Music was an elderly gentleman. Every evening at exactly the same time he experienced a serious uncontrollable seizure. It took doctors quite some time to figure out what was causing the seizure, but they soon figured out that he had been listening to the BBC news broadcast every evening at the time of his seizure and the sounds of that broadcast had been causing his seizure.

The broadcast began with a recording of the famous "Bow Bells" from the church St Mary le-Bow in London, England. (The term "Cockney" actually refers specifically to the group of people who live in London within earshot of the Bow Bells.) Upon realizing what was causing his affliction, his doctors took him to the church St Mary le-Bow to see if they could recreate the situation that was causing his seizure, however, the sound of the bells in real life did not cause a seizure: it was only the pre-recorded sound of the Bow Bells that caused his affliction. I was so flabbergasted by this story that I took to writing this piece Fear of Music: Bow Bells for solo orchestra chimes and soundscape.

Fear of Music: Bow Bells explores the orchestra chimes in an unusual fashion. Aside from the fact that orchestra chimes are seldom considered a solo instrument, I thought it would be interesting to see what I could do with them that would not only showcase the instrument but also find some new sounds that the chimes could produce. This exploration of sounds concludes at the end of the piece as I recreate as best as possible the sound of the Bow Bells on the orchestra chimes. My live playing is then slowly taken over by the prerecorded sound of the Bow Bells to close the piece.