m.u.l.t.i.t.u.d.e (2025) - for Alto Flute, Bassoon, Percussion, Piano, Viola, and Cello

Duration: 7'30''
Program Note:

The Shurangama Sutra mentions: "Within the body, there are 84,000 insects, which constantly consume the person. There are hundreds of insects in the mouth, thousands in the ears, tens of thousands in the eyes, and many more throughout the body."

I've always been intrigued by the Buddhist idea of the body as a multitude. To me, individual identities and the temporal grains of memory are intertwined with the crowd and our collective history, all contained and arising within a single, murky breath—what we call shared breath and shared destiny.

I want to delve into the rhythms, mass, and frequency of the sound of the multitude. A sense of rhythm is evidence of entering into something—the deeper you go, the stronger and more sensitive this sense becomes. As I shatter a single breath into billions of tiny dust particles, I wonder: at what point do we stop automatically connecting these particles, and they become something else? When that happens, is history melting? When, then, is the multitude truly present?

Created as part of Stipendium des Internationalen Hanns-Eisler-Stipendiums der Stadt Leipzig 2025