Earth Hour

Programme Notes

On March 28, 2009, I was invited to perform at an Earth Hour party hosted by a law firm in one of Toronto’s skyscrapers in the Financial District. As the city’s elite hobnobbed, admiring the lack of lights in the sprawling skyline, I quietly improvised. Once 8:30 p.m. hit, the lights went out, and all the partygoers gathered in a room on the opposite side of the building to listen to speeches. I was left alone, quietly playing, immersing myself in and enjoying the darkness. This is where Earth Hour, this composition, was born.

Composing a 60-minute continuous piano piece was something that initially seemed daunting. As a composer, I was challenged: how do I make a composition interesting when both the performer and listeners are immersed in darkness, ensuring that the sound of the piano and the darkness are equal partners in the experience? I quickly realized that creating a soundtrack to being alone with one’s thoughts can evoke many different emotions: reflective, calming, scary, empty, or happy, to name a few. This made me realize that, although it was one cohesive piece, the music could change thematically to reflect the varied emotions one can feel in the dark.

From beginning to end, Earth Hour takes exactly 60 minutes to perform—not a second less or more. Performers are to use an earpiece so they can play along with a metronome to ensure accurate timing. Earth Hour is divided into 12 sections/themes, each lasting exactly 5 minutes. The first 6 themes contrast with one another based on a random note-picking pattern formula I created, which is correlated to the letters of my name and my wife’s. The last 6 themes are variations of the first 6, presented in reverse order, giving the overall composition a palindrome structure. One of the reasons I did this was to allow the ending of the piece to seamlessly connect to the beginning, enabling a performance to last longer than just one hour if the performer (or performers) desire. A sense of start or completion isn’t as important as the experience itself.

Whether you listen to the entire piece or just a snippet, my hope is that you will find peace and time for inner reflection. I want to give you space to think about how you can improve yourself and the world around you. Sitting in the dark doesn’t have to occur only on the last Saturday of every March.

– Frank Horvat