Nothing Ever Truly Ends

ensemble of 24 players
2024

Duration 10’
Instrumentation 2.1.2.1 – 2.1.1.1 – 3P – Hp – Cel – 3.0.2.2.1
First Performance 6 January 2025, by Ensemble intercontemporain conducted by Pierre Bleuse
Commissioned by Ensemble intercontemporain with the support of the Pierre Boulez Foundation for the opening of the Boulez year in France

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I dedicate Nothing Ever Truly Ends to the memory of Pierre Boulez. I met Pierre only once, in 2009 when he led a workshop on one of my ensemble pieces. He offered me invaluable advice, making suggestions specifically for the work, but also in general about the compositional process. It is a vivid recollection that is ever present to me, recalling his clear and concise insightfulness on its complexities. Particularly, he questioned what would happen if the tempo slowed right down. What creative possibilities might this open up in the available space? Furthermore, what opportunities now exist for introducing additional elements? Forming the piece through the prism of his teaching – the manipulation of speed and time, the exploration of colour and sonic space – was fundamental in developing Nothing Ever Truly Ends.

The piece begins with, and is framed by ‘rituals’ – short, sustained sections that combine various metallic percussion and a muted, mid-range cluster. The piece is grounded through the frequent recurrence of variations on the opening. Between the rituals there are five main sections, the first of which – gentle, sparse, eerily beautiful – returns at the end. The second is dark and expressive, unfolding into a tense, sinister third section, expanding continuously toward the climax. The tension is released with bird-like fluttering, lightly, plaintively singing: the lost souls of war? The whole piece is held, suspended over time, focused on where something may lead- towards, away? The world is still turning. Time, relentless in its march, moves on.

The title Nothing Ever Truly Ends is the very last line of the book American Mother, where renowned author, Colum McCann, tells Diane Foley’s story as she recalls the months of her son’s captivity in the hands of the Islamic State group, the efforts made to bring him home and the days following his death, in which Diane came face to face with one of the men – Alexanda Kotey – responsible for her son’s kidnapping, torture and execution. At the very end of this extraordinary meeting with Kotey, Diane outstretches her hand in a gesture of peace.
“… she shook his hand. She made that gesture. And he received it. Everything good, since begun, lasts. Nothing ever truly ends.”

Loss. Yet forgiveness, which is far more affecting than hate. Finding good in this world, despite the hostile, dangerous times in which we live. This is the story on which my first full-scale opera is based, with a libretto written by McCann, and this ensemble piece inhabiting the same space.