10⁶²

(10 to the power 62) (2025-6)

for solo saxophone, saxophone quartet, and eight saxophonists, or solo saxophone and 12 prerecorded saxophones

This piece emerged from a conversation I had with the brilliant saxophonist Thomas Giles, who had just successfully premiered my {r}emote, written at his request. In a fit of quixotic enthusiasm Thomas suggested a much grander project, a large-scale piece for solo saxophone and saxophone ensemble, of a size often referred to as a ‘saxophone orchestra’. Not one to let an opportunity pass, I immediately started to plan such a work, before Thomas had a chance to retract… It struck me that a project I had nursed rather ineffectually for several years might be a good fit. This was to be a work that emulated the famous film by Charles and Ray Eames called Powers of Ten, which film consisted of a smoothly effected outward expansion of image resolution from picnic-site to galactic scale, and back downward to atomic. I have written other works that offer abstracted ‘portraits’ of the universe from beginning to end; this one was to offer a portrait from bottom to top. The title accordingly refers to the ratio between the smallest (notional) distance in the universe to the diameter of the universe itself, which, after some rather broad-brush arithmetic (below), I settled on as 10 to the power 62. I had originally envisioned the work as an extended percussion ensemble project, but, despite some plotting with Speak Percussion the idea never got off the ground, which although disappointing, freed me to reimagine the music as driven by pitched material rather than unpitched.

I ran this idea rather tentatively past Thomas and he immediately saw the potential; it would be the sort of work that could be done as a concert item, solo + playback, or solo with ensemble, but also in some more theatrical format such as dance, or with other media. We bounced ideas about instrumentation back and forth until we settled on solo soprano sax, sax quartet, and ripieno of eight players laid out four left, and four right of stage (not uninfluenced by pieces like Jolivet’s Second Cello Concerto or Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro). One vision I had for the piece was of multiple instances of the same instrument, so maybe five soprano saxophones, or altos, etc, which could have required a fair amount of doubling-up, but in the event I realised that I could achieve most of what I had in mind with minimal changes to this basic ensemble. I had originally imagined the ripieno players being where all the instrumental doubling would take place, but in the event the few doublings got allocated to the solo sax quartet. Although I adopted this arrangement as more practical, it also permitted me to write more virtuosically for these doubled instruments, and to realise my imagining of five polyphonic sopranos. The line-up was finalised as:

Centre stage: solo soprano

Centre stage: sax quartet – alto doubling sopranino, tenor doubling soprano

Left stage ripieno: soprano, alto, tenor, baritone

Right stage ripieno: soprano, alto, baritone, bass

This line-up is seen in the video of the World Premiere performance in Chicago (see Video tab). This concert introduced the Chicago Version of the score.

What’s in a title? Well, I had consistently identified this piece while discussing it with Thomas as 10^62, but realised more recently that many people had no idea what the ‘hat’ actually signified, so, to be clear, the ‘hat’ notation is simply an alternative to the usual superscript notation – 10⁶² – when that is not available typographically, and the work is properly referred to as 10 to the power 62. Why 10 to the power 62? I arrived at the title of this piece via a fairly simple ratio, the smallest meaningful length in physics to the largest.

The smallest meaningful unit of distance is the Planck Length, which is circa 1.6 x 10^–35 metres. It is how far that light travels in a single unit of Planck Time, which is approximately 10^-43 seconds (derived from fundamental physical constants).

The largest distance currently acknowledged is the breadth of the visible cosmos, which is twice the radius of 45.7 billion light years. A light year is 9,460,730,472,580,800 metres. So (91.4 x 10^9) x (9.46 x 10^15) = 8,646,440,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 metres, or 8.6 x 10²⁷.

The ratio of 10^–35 to 10²⁷ is 10⁶², or “ten to the power 62”. Thus, the title.

The piece consists of fifteen sections, each of which represents one level of an increasing scale of magnitude. Unlike the Eames’ Powers of Ten film they are not an even linear sequence, but represent significant steps in the ladder from smallest to largest. The work begins ‘at the bottom’, with a bare harmonic series functioning as a kind of ‘inactivated’ ur-sound, drawing our ears into the pre-nascent soundworld of the saxophone orchestra. The music then abruptly shifts into the scale-zone of the Planck distance, which is perhaps the granular unit of space-time (at least, loop-gravitationally). From there it moves upward, via particles, atoms, molecules, animalcules (which I frequently refer to as ‘slime’), and fauna. This is the arc of Part I, which could be loosely termed terrestrial. Part II is a reflection on the tragicomic zone of humankind, the anthroposphere, and is in effect an extended cadenza for the soloist, while the other players are permitted varying degrees of independence. Part III, perhaps celestial?, moves the scale beyond the planetary into vaster, more attenuated, realms, where change is slow, and the material melodic – my gloss on the clichéd ‘music of the spheres’. This latter arc, from sublunar to supra-cosmic, will present interesting compositional challenges, and I look forward – with slight trepidation – to addressing them.

I recently came across an interview with the musician Meg Washington in the Guardian, which contained the observation that ‘What is worth making music about right now, Meg Washington decided, is a “more outward interrogation of nature”’, a remark that resonated strongly with my approach to composition. The conceptual basis of all my music is analogical, I develop structures that mimic more or less closely the behaviours of my models, and intendedly draw the listener’s attention to such behaviours but retain the features of music qua music; I have made no attempt to embody actual physics or physical behaviours in the pieces – believe me, I have tried previously and the results are desultory. The patterns of nature are not well-suited to musical assembly. So, the piece is a commentary, an “interrogation of nature”, not a textbook. Most of my works attempt to critique reality by using models derived indirectly from some external feature, whether it be from notions of force-fields or cabalist approaches to linguistics. I see this as an approach that is honest to myself; I am deeply uncomfortable with pinning my ideas to some pre-existing template invented by someone else such as a painting or a work of literature. I have occasionally borrowed from the other arts, but usually where the subject artwork itself reflects on some more abstract phenomenon, such as Greg Egan’s short story Luminous, which concerns a ‘photonic computer’ modelling alternative maths, or John Barrow’s Book of Universes.

There is consequently no point looking at my score to try and discern something overtly ‘nuclear’ or ‘atomic’ in the music, the aspects that interest me have been metabolised into sonic behaviours characteristic of what I think of as ‘my music’, which for me is the point. If the outcome is not identifiably music by me then the work is merely an exercise in transcription, a rendering of one medium into another, however transformedly.

 

Chicago version

1 Planck length — 2 fundamental elementary particles — 3 nuclear — 4 atomic — 5 molecular

When Taimur Sullivan and his band of saxophonists at the Northwestern University Chicago performed this work on 2 March 2026, I had only completed the first five sections. By a curious accident of timing these five sections happen to be the ones concerned with matter: from the vacuum energy up to molecules. In effect, the performed sections end at the cusp where what Bateson categorised as the pleroma, or energetic physical realm, morphs into the creatura, or informational/living domain, the realm of mind (using that term loosely). This transition will (hopefully) be very clear in the work’s full arc but because the Chicago version is only concerned with the pleromatic the music possesses a certain homogeneity, although the remarkable performance by Thomas and the NU players brings out many richnesses I tried to code in the score.

Strictly speaking this version only stretches from 10^-35 to ~10^-9 – the realm of the unimaginably small – so should have been called 10 to the power 26 but that struck me as an overcomplication that few would grasp (and besides, it looks like a typo), so I decided to retain the ‘fully-expanded’ name.

For time reasons I was unable to create the transposed score and parts myself, and this performance was only made possible by Nicholas Batina taking on the considerable task of producing these performance materials. To Nick, many, many thanks.

The performance also could not have taken place without Taimur Sullivan’s direction. To Taimur also, many thanks, and much appreciation for the insightful reading of my score. Every time I listen to the recording I am impressed by how well the ensemble managed to bring my vision to life.

 

Larger architecture

I (which could be – but isn’t – subtitled terrestrial)

1 Planck length — 2 fundamental elementary particles — 3 nuclear — 4 atomic — 5 molecular— 6 microscopic — 7 macroscopic

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II
8 anthroposphere

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III (which could be – but isn’t – subtitled celestial)

9 subplanetary/cislunar — 10 planetary — 11 star-sized — 12 stellar systems —13 galactic — 14 clusters & voids including Laniakea — 15 cosmic

At the time of writing (27 March 2026) the entire Part I of the piece is complete, and the score can be viewed in the Part I tab.

Synoptically, Part I can be described as a gradual transition from rather vacant material, analogous to processes in the quantum-scale domain, Jung’s Pleroma, to capricious, pulsing, floridly abundant music, more characteristic of the world of sentience, Jung’s Creatura. Part II Anthroposphere is, as it proposes, a meditation on the human scale, with the soloist navigating the passing attentions of the ‘flash-mob’ ensemble. Part III treats of those thing above us, from the sky to the cosmic limits, with a nod to Laniakea, the galactic cluster we inhabit, en route. Together, all three Parts offer a personal view of the entire sweep of sizes inherent in our universe. As I say: a portrait of reality from bottom to top.

 

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