$20.00

Solo Organ

Duration: c. 15 min.

Program Note

One recent theologian posited that the most critical question of the 21st century is anthropological: “What does it mean to be human?” The rise of AI image, text, and audio generators has pressed this question with particular force on the contemporary artist. The artist must address the question, “What makes human creativity valuable?”

Imago is a musical and theological reflection on these questions. In Christian theology, humanity’s value stems from being made “Imago Dei” – in the image of God. Each movement of Imago is inspired by facets of humanity that are unique in Christian teaching: freedom (“Volitio (Posse Peccare)” – a tone poem built around Genesis 1-3), moral agency (“Lapsus” – referring to humanity’s Fall from the state of innocence), and spiritual life (“Resurgo”).

I constructed Imago from two basic materials. The first is the hymn-tune St. Anne, chosen for both its association with hymnody (“O God, Our Help in Ages Past”) and as a nod to Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in Eb Major (BWV 552). The second of these materials is a theme produced via an AI music generator (Anticipation) after being “inspired” by St. Anne.

Rather than being a polemic against AI, I think of Imago as a celebration of what makes art valuable. The answer, at least in part, is that it comes from actual, flesh-and- blood people – people made in the image of God who experience the world with all its subjective agonies, pleasures, and absurdities. Machines imitate and reorganize; people experience and empathize. I find the latter far more profound.

Commissioned by the American Guild of Organists for the 2025 Ronald G. Pogorzelski and Lester D. Yankee Annual Competition