When sitting down to write new program notes for a long time, I came across a trove of draft attempts from 2010. What struck me immediately was my anxiety, a strong urge to defend my musical choices by bristling and, as it were, going on the attack. Statements I thought at the time to be daring—"Audaciously, there are no Vuitton handbags of contemporary string writing" and "In the end, however, I cannot define my work for you in words (to paraphrase Mendelssohn, if I could, why even bother?)"—now seem to me to be defensive, off-putting. What strikes me now is the question: why was I afraid of my own music seven years ago?

With the benefit of hindsight, I see that a long time was for me a public expression of deeply personal thoughts, in which I place my own self and sense of agency in the world under intense scrutiny. This perhaps explains my anxiety—a long time challenged bedrock beliefs I had about myself and the world. The sense of self I skewered here is the one rampant in American society: that of the self-made individual, whose will-to-power leads to success and whose failure is indicative of poor moral character. In a long time, I rejected this worldview in favor of the truth: we are all, as human beings, vulnerable to forces far beyond our control, and any success we have in life is fundamentally dependent upon far more than simply our own actions.

In a long time, a propulsive narrative leads to the emergence of an overwhelming force that breaks the imagined musical protagonist utterly. Afterwards there is no resurrection, no communion with nature, nor even any dark yet restful nothingness. Instead, something inside simply breaks. This may seem depressing on its face, yet the deeper humanity of this fable comes from the solution to such a crisis of individuality: compassion, understanding, and support from all of our human companions. Meaning and purpose should not come from heroic individualism, but through creating genuine connection with others.