Est-ce une Utopie?

Est-ce une Utopie? — is it a utopia? — is a ten-minute piece for solo cello written in 2019 and first played, as a work in progress, by the Italian cellist Leo Morello in May of that year. Its formal premiere is still to come.

The question of the title was asked me, in French, by a friend in Brussels about the life I was then planning: a composer’s life, a woman’s, a foreigner’s, all at once. The piece is an attempt to answer with an instrument rather than a sentence. It is built from a single rising scale — an actual ascent, from the open C string to the top of the fingerboard — which the cello attempts over and over. Each attempt gets a little higher before something gives way: the bow slides off into noise, the pitch bends out of true, a double stop locks up and has to be abandoned. Between attempts there are rests, long ones, during which harmonics hang in the air like something seen from far off.

The last attempt reaches the top. Whether that is an answer, or only a utopia, is left to whoever is listening.