Duty explores both sonic possibilities and human limits, harnessing the bodily convulsions produced by electric muscle stimulation to control performers in a work composed in one octave for fourteen handbells. A composition converted to MIDI triggers an electric muscle stimulation device, which delivers electrical impulses to particular muscles via electrodes, mimicking the impulses of the central nervous system causing the performers’ muscles to contract involuntarily. The performers’ unnatural jolts are contrasted with their involuntary execution of precise rhythms. The title of the work refers both to the movement of a bell and the imposition of physical obligations—or duties—upon the performers, and references Pavlovian classical conditioning experiments pairing the sound of a bell with another stimulus to elicit conditioned responses in subjects.