Written for its July 27, 2023 world premiere by the contemporary music ensemble Alarm Will Sound, Claude Baker’s Carmen infernarum machinarum fugax (The Fleeting Song of the Infernal Machines) is written for a sixteen-piece chamber ensemble. During the course of this work, relatively short, machine-like events (some pitched, some non-pitched) continually start up, sputter, and inevitably stall. Just when it seems as if they are at last humming along, a spanner is thrown into the works, and everything is brought abruptly to a halt. The machines struggle to restart themselves, but, in the end, their song does indeed prove to be all too fleeting.