All Against All

Since its invention, the orchestra has been used as a metaphor for smaller entities that work together to produce a greater whole—for civil society, the army, the human body, nature, and machines. I wanted to update these metaphors for the twenty-first century when I wrote my last orchestral piece, Hive Mind, in 2015, so I devised a survey in which the orchestra made suggestions such as the brain, a giant jigsaw, a multi-layered conversation, and a railway terminal, and the European Union. The last of these suggestions now seems hopelessly quixotic after the Brexit vote, the Trump presidency, and the rise of the alt-right in America and populist movements across Europe. All Against All is the evil twin of Hive Mind; a Mr Hyde to the latter’s Dr Jekyll. The title is derived from the seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s famous description of human existence in the state of nature as

… that condition which is called War; and such a war as is of every man against every man. […] In such condition there is no place for Industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual Fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. (Leviathan, Chapter XIII)

In All Against All, instruments are pitted against each other: in a nod to the title of Hobbes’s masterwork, the heart of the piece depicts the stately battle between two sea monsters (the heavy brass vs the celli-bass); the war is waged on multiple levels: at first between families of instruments, and then among instrumental families, and then, finally, all against all.