National Insecurity
Instrumentation:
flute, bass clarinet, trumpet, vibraphone, violin, cello, bass
Duration:
approximately 12' - 13'
Dates of Composition/Revision:
September - October 2002
Premier Performance:
January 29, 2003 - Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music. The Callithumpian Consort, Stephen Drury, artistic director: Ebonee Thomas - flute; MIchael Norsworthy - bass clarinet; Steve Banzaert - trumpet; Tim Feeney - vibraphone; Adda Kridler - violin; Ben Schwartz - cello; Evan Halloin - bass
Score:
available immediately
Parts:
available on short notice
Recording:
Live recording of performance on 1/29/02 available on request. Performance on 5/6/03 available for download in mp3 format.
Notes:
"National Insecurity" was written on a commission from the Callithumpian Consort.
From the original concert program (1/29/03):
Though I generally have an aversion to writing music that purports to carry any sort of political message, and I have in the past deliberately avoided composing "programmatic" music, I found myself faced with some very specific and (to me) inevitable connotations of what I had written in this piece when it came time to give it a title. Besides being naturally infused with some of the anxiety and uncertainty of the time and place it was written in, this music is actually trying to "say" something very specific, or at least so it seems to me in retrospect.
Yet I am loathe to specify this for anyone other than myself, since so much of my favorite "abstract" music from all eras and genres works so well largely because it allows for an almost infinite number of programs to be imposed upon it by each individual listener. I'll try to be vague then, but what I will say is that the "starting point" for all of the music in this piece is literally a "low point," or perhaps even the lowest possible point: A 7-note chord, which consists of the lowest playable notes on all 7 instruments that are used, is where many of the ideas in the piece derive from.
However, in the event, this is not how the piece actually starts - the "all-time-low" is not reached until the very end of the piece, where all 7 lowest notes are distinctly heard, twice. Instead, the piece begins with a brief outburst of vitriol from all the musicians, followed by numerous abortive attempts to come to an agreement. The 7 instruments all have very distinct manners of expressing themselves, and they disagree most of the time, despite brief moments of accord. During the course of the first 6 minutes of music, in fact every possible "argument" (in the form of a duo) that could happen between any 2 of the 7 musicians DOES happen. Some of these arguments (the more fruitful ones) go on for a while, but others last for only a few beats. Encouragingly enough, all of this leads to a sustained slow passage, in which harmonic motion is all but arrested.
From this point forward the music behaves very differently: After a brief silence, a musical fabric is built up, layer by layer, out of repeating cycles in each instrument, each of a different length and a different character. Along the way, however, something unfortunate happens: As though put through a sieve, all 7 instruments are gradually forced to start conforming to a single rhythmic pattern in perpetual motion. Eventually, this culminates in a ghastly passage of pure parallel motion ("united we stand"), a final confrontation and a disintegration.
