Disunities

I kept restarting this piece over the course of a couple of years, while it was subject to a series of pandemic-era postponements. None of my ideas felt right for these times of precarity, suffering, conflict, and shattering confusion. It was, quite frankly, difficult to determine this work’s reason for being.

Finally, in a notebook last summer I wrote, “I thought about disunities and about managed parallel synchronies — say, pairwise coordinations in rhythm, while there might also be a relationship in the material between different subgroups. So what may seem like factions turns out to be entangled, or vice versa. Maybe it’s about portraying unities devolving into factions. It feels like the right move right now.” I pursued a strategy of “pairing off”/“teaming up” within the quintet — five apart, one against four, two against three, and so forth. This simple, almost banal iterative method somehow offered a rush of clarity, a newfound sense of what it is that a group of people can do together — hope, in a word.

I’m very grateful to David Krakauer and the Lydian Quartet for inviting me into their world, and for giving this piece the life that it needs.

– Vijay Iyer
March 12, 2022