Program notes to Mikel Kuehn's Deus ex machina

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines deus ex machina (a god from a machine) as: 1) "A god introduced by means of a crane in ancient Greek and Roman drama to decide the final outcome." and 2) "A person or thing (as in fiction or drama) that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty".

The concept of deus ex machina reveals many insights into the structure of the piece. In fact, the term can be applied to describe many aspects of the creative process (e.g., using a "form" or "plan" to spawn creative ideas). While that is one implication, another is the musical character of the piece itself, which is one of conflict. The work opens with a series of dark, shifting sonorities, mainly vertical in character and ends with a high melody in all 30 violins. The road between is full of twists, turns, mood shifts, and conflicts Ð basically a battle of conformity versus individuality. The elixir is a "melody" that is suddenly introduced at the end of the second section and leads to a battle of horizontal (linear or melodic) versus vertical (harmonic) material in the fourth section (and the rest of the piece).

The work contains five large sections: A1, B1, A2, B2, C. While each is cast in a separate tempo, the A sections are generally more fluid than the B sections, which are static in nature. Section C contains five small sections (A+B, B2, A2, B1, A1), the last four of which are a reverse structural recapitulation of the first four large sections in the piece. The first section of C (A+B) is the structural climax of the piece where the fluid motion inherent to A meets the static character of B; this section is marked by the only use of the tambourine in the work and a violent outburst of individual motion in the wind writing. As in works of the classical period, proportion plays an important role in the large-scale structure of Deus ex machina. Several sections are paired into equal temporal lengths (A1/A2 and B1/C) and the last four inner partitions of the final section (C) recapitulate the temporal (and tempo) proportions of the initial four large sections.

The orchestration is also spawned from a "machina". Throughout the work a path of unfolding orchestrational focus is constructed in the following sequence: (A1) brass + percussion + strings, entire orchestra; (B1) winds + brass + strings, winds + strings, winds + percussion + strings; (A2) percussion + strings, percussion solo, brass + percussion; (B2) winds + brass + percussion, winds + percussion; (C) winds solo, winds + brass, brass solo, brass + strings, strings solo.