Totality

Totality traces the arc of a day that becomes something far more extraordinary and unsettling than a
simple sunrise and sunset. Scored for the dark, resonant low flutes, the piece explores light, shadow, celestial cycles, and the profound emotional experience of witnessing a total solar eclipse.

The piece begins in darkness, with bass flutes passing a low G back and forth. Altos emerge with a rising octave motive, suggesting the first rays of sunrise and nodding to Nielsen's Helios Overture. At A, the "sun theme" enters in Bass 2. Based on the hymn God of Our Fathers, it is warm, grounded, and secure,
set in a steady meter and major tonality. The lowest flutes carry the noble melody while altos respond with bird-like figures, evoking the beauty of a world illuminated by morning light.

As the music darkens toward sunset, the texture thins and cools. At C, night arrives. A high contrabass
solo introduces the ethereal "moon theme," accompanied by shimmering tremolos like distant stars. The bass flutes exchange a rising and falling line representing the moon's pull on the tides. The moon music grows increasingly intense, centered on the acoustic scale, reflecting both its beauty and its long
association with mystery and madness.

Gradually, fragments of the sun theme attempt to return, becoming faster and more urgent as sun and moon move toward alignment. A five-note motive in Alto 1 creates rhythmic misalignment in 3/4 time, entering eighteen beats before the chord of totality—a reference to the 18-year Saros cycle of eclipses.
On beat two of measure 88, the eclipse reaches totality.

What follows (H) is not triumph but primal terror. The music seeks to capture the indescribable
wrongness of standing beneath a totaleclipse-the sense that the universe has briefly torn open. As
described in Vi Hart's video essay Totality, the eclipsed sun is not merely black but a new, impossible color; not a void, but something heavy and alive: "an unholy horror sucking the life and light and warmth out of the universe with these long reaching arms." This section conveys that jolt of fear and awe. Measures subtly expand and contract by an eighth note, creating a sensation of the world stretching
and shrinking.

As the eclipse passes, the moon theme rises and then descends, gradually transforming into the sun
theme. When the sun finally returns, its opening octave is stretched to a ninth-familiar, yet altered. The closing harmony remains uncertain, suggesting that after witnessing totality, neither the sky nor the listener is never quite the same.