Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, first published in 2011, in Hebrew, and in 2014 in English, is one of the most celebrated books of our time, and justifiably so. With its audacious subtitle, the book attempts to explore and explain why our particular species has survived while most others have perished, and how we are set apart from all other species due to our ability to understand and give meaning to things that do not necessarily exist – the shared myths of language, money, religion, love, nationhood, politics and a host of things not seen but with which we have a shared understanding.
Almost immediately after I began the book I would begin to sketch out some ideas for an extensive piece of music, some dealing generically with the concepts and parts of the book. This proved to be ineffective, but the idea for the piece stayed with me for a year, and it would eventually take shape during the act of its composition. In no way have I tried to create a chapter by chapter illustration of the book (or of humankind), nor have I followed closely its overall outline or timeline. What I have attempted is a musical response to the human challenges, breakthroughs, concepts or ideas that we as a species have carried with us, developing along the way these past hundred thousand or so years.
I have composed several works for solo piano, and a great number for instruments with piano, or for the piano in chamber music combinations. I have not, however, ever truly been comfortable with the instrument and have always been intimidated by composing for it. Decades after I first began playing, I can only play some rather rudimentary things. Why the piano? As my initial ideas took on some shape the thought of exploring a musical homage to humankind on one of humanity’s great inventions began to appeal. I imagined the modern piano as a sort of meta-instrument, its reverberations present at the dawns of humankind, the cognitive and agricultural revolutions, and some of the most notable inflection points of our troubled and triumphant history; a voyeur, painter, scribe and reporter across the millennia of our existence.
In the midst of composition, my family has experienced some immense challenges, a global pandemic, political, racial and social instability, and a tragedy that has shaken my faith and understanding of our very human nature. To complete it is to arrive at something far more significant than perhaps any other completed composition. It seems to me, at least sometimes, that the only thing humanity has shared across the long arc of history, is suffering.
The piece begins not on the piano, but at the piano, with a single human breath, as I imagine the first music to have been, somewhere near the dawn of our species. If it is, like most, intended to die off, I imagine the very last music to sound more or less the same.
I am grateful to Yuval Noah Harari for permission in using the title as inspiration of my musical work. Note that he nor the publisher expressly endorses the work.