Three Morlocks (or The Toys of Desperation) by Mark Saya for percussion trio. This piece demands great ingenuity on the part of its players in the realization of the score and in the construction of the instrumental setup - that is, the "machine." In general, the machine should be an ungainly, spiky-looking object, a strange cross between a comical Rube Goldberg-like contraption and a sinister, Kafkaesque or Wellsian instrument of torture (see, for example, Kafka's "In the Penal Colony," or Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau). In fact, consider this dichotomy between the amusing and the threatening as essential not only to the machine but to the demeanor of the players as well. Instrumentation (3 players):With pedal, and deadened: bass drum (low), tam-tam (medium), wooden "sound board" (high)Metal: brake drums, tin cans, grills, coils, anvils, chains, gearworks, garbage can, scrapsWood: woodblocks, guiros, dowel harps, castanets, ratchets, sand blocks, scrapsSundries: glass bottles, toggle switches, timer with soft alarm, timer with loud alarm, wires (some strung with tambourine rattles), lion's roar, maracas, automobile jack (old style)Implements (with which to play the "machine"):small tarps, six "shop" rags, various rubbish (wadded paper, chinks of rock and brick, a rubber rat perhaps?), various "fuels" (nuts and bolts, dirty water, coolant, sand, beebees, firewood), brooms, funnels, files, hammers (large and small), crowbars, three oil cans (empty), one egg, electric drill, handsaw, glass bottles and jars (for smashing), lengths of chain (various sizes), various sticks and mallets
