Whitacre: Leonardo Dreams Of His Flying Machine

Leonardo da Vinci was certainly the definition of a true "Renaissance man." He was an extraordinary man of many talents, dabbling in art, anatomy, architecture, botany, music, sculpture and engineering among many different fields. Da Vinci is also regarded as one of the greatest inventors to ever live; his notebooks are filled with sketches and notes for inventions that were far ahead of his time. What must've been going through his mind when he was coming up with these revolutionary ideas? That's the question that composer Eric Whitacre and poet Charles Anthony Silvestri attempt to answer in this piece, Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine. The piece is, in the poet's words, "a soundtrack of what that dream might be like." The clashing chords and extended techniques required of the singers in the chorus help to establish the dream-like world where the master himself would often go to bring his greatest visions to life.