800 Million Heartbeats
for clarinet, bass trombone,
piano and percussion (1999)
or sop. sax, vln, vla, cb and
pno
duration: 8’
GRT • 058 / 073
score available from
Australian Music
Centre
program note
Many living
creatures lives apparently last for around 800 million
heartbeats. Birds like the hummingbird have a very rapid
wing motion - so fast that it becomes a blur. It also has a
correspondingly fast heart rate and lives a shorter (and
arguably more intense) life. By contrast, the sloth has a
very slow heart rate, is given to much sleep and has a
relatively long life. If humans had only 800 million
heartbeats in a life, we would die young (probably in our
twenties). But the actual figure is only nominal. It
becomes a heightened metaphor for a life, measured in
heartbeats, and the journeys that fill its course. This
piece was originally written for the Southbank Contemporary
Music Ensemble and subsequently adapted as a quintet for
Topology and most recently for The Yarra Trio.
article
available on resources
page
review
“Stuart
Greenbaum’s 800
Million Heartbeats was a study in atmospherics.”
Joel Crotty, The Age, November 1999