The title translates to "sound and light", which is taken from the eponymous form of nighttime entertainment performed at tourist attractions.
In the program notes to the score, Stucky said he "intended [the piece] as an orchestral entertainment whose subject is the play of colors, bright surfaces, and shimmery textures.
"[1] Stucky further commented on the style of the work, writing:I tried in this music to recapture the elan and immediacy that regular meters and repetitive rhythms make possible—the sort of thing forbidden during the modernist regime but later restored in the "minimalist" work of composers like John Adams, Steve Reich, and many others.
Throughout its brief nine minutes, therefore, the piece is built almost exclusively of short, busy ostinato figures—my attempt, I suppose, to achieve the rhythmic vitality of minimalism, but without giving in to the over-simple harmonic language that sometimes comes with it.
Minimalist ostinatos propel the piece, but Mr. Stucky has so much going on, in so many layers and usually at contrasting tempos, that his use of repetition seems a secondary concern.