Inner Voices

Both the intent and the sound of Breaking are announced by its title. In Breaking I return once again to the classic American trope of depiction found in Amy Beach’s “Gaelic” Symphony, Charles Ives’s The Housatonic at Stockbridge (and many other works), the compositions of Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins, and Duke Ellington’s “tone parallels.” Moreover, the first two books in Chinua Achebe’s “African Trilogy,” Things Fall Apart and No Longer At Ease, also provide a touchstone for engaging with Breaking. While Achebe confronts the consequences of social conflict and human aspiration under the colonial yoke, Breaking represents my own contemporary experience with the struggles over decolonization and creolization in contemporary music and culture more generally, as well as being one of a number of pieces I have composed under COVID-19 pandemic conditions. Under such conditions, we are indeed no longer at ease. In this music, the “flow of things” (as composer Roscoe Mitchell might put it) is broken but also sustained. The sounds of struggle, even to express basic instrumental technique, aim to foster in its hearers a sense of instability, a subliminal psychological discouragement of complacency that I hope migrates beyond the sounds of the piece to the consideration of larger issues in our lives. The German theorist Ottmar Ette has described the work of the 18th century Afro-German philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo as “eine Philosophie ohne festen Wohnsitz,” a philosophy without a fixed abode. This early understanding of Germany, Europe, and indeed the world, in terms of new modes of mobile relation still seems relevant to our contemporary situation, in which we all suddenly find ourselves ohne festen Wohnsitz. The recognition of this psychological and physical fact of contemporary life animates Breaking. The composition of Breaking was supported by a joint commission between the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (UK) and Freundeskreis Hauskonzert Musik für Heute (Hannover, Germany). The world premiere was presented by the Neue Ensemble (Hannover, Germany), conducted by Stephan Meier.