Dystopia, a short encore piece for solo violin, is the second of two works Hatzis has written for American violin virtuoso Hilary Hahn, along with Coming To (PE119) for violin and piano. Dystopia uses the musical metaphor of ancient and modern modal material to meditate on the causes of religious intransigence, disenchantment and, ultimately, jihad. Demanding a range of technical and expressive skills, the violinist is called on to embody the ideological conflict that Hatzis used as inspiration for writing the piece. While Coming To requires swift alternation between arco and pizzicato techniques, the hyper-virtuosic Dystopia sees the violinist often having to employ both techniques simultaneously in an imaginative decoupling of the left and right hands. Even the most accomplished violinist would struggle to find a more impressive and absorbing addition to their encore repertoire than this bold, dense and captivating piece.
In this work, the meaning of 'dystopia' (a terrible place) refers to the current conflict between narrowly defined religious creeds, particularly between the Muslim world and so-called Western civilization, or modernity. The Muslim world is musically depicted by the 'squareness' of the ancient Dorian mode with a microtonally raised second degree (B-quarter flat), the use of which is widespread in several Islamic musical cultures of the Middle East, North-East Africa and South Asia. Western civilization is depicted by the equal-temperament tuning used in Western European music from the 18th century onwards, which significantly compromises modal identity but compensates for this by providing smoother harmonic access to different keys. The performer is to use Dystopia's navigation between these two modal worlds to express the following ideological journey:
We begin with the assurance of the traditional modal world, played with unshaken conviction, before moving into what sounds like an improvised section set against a steady left-hand pizzicato rhythm. We are then gradually and imperceptibly drawn into Western classicism and modernity: the microtonally raised second degree of the Dorian mode is incrementally lowered until it reaches a normal B-flat and, arriving at equal temperament. Meanwhile, the previously monophonic and/or heterophonic music gives way to harmonic substance and motion. This shift is a musical reference to modernity: at first the experience is pleasurable and exhilarating but gradually we realize that, when seen from a certain distance, it is a frighteningly accelerating ride to nowhere. At the peak of the acceleration we are confronted with the possibility that, while modernity may have helped dispense with false certitudes, it has not replaced them with anything of redeeming value, revealing an underlying nihilism. At this moment of realization a reactionary about-face occurs and we revert our attention to the original mode, with particular focus on what sets it apart from Western modernity – the peculiarly-tuned second scale degree. In a desperate attempt to hold on to something known and 'concrete', focus is increasingly placed on the difference, rather than the commonality, of the two experiences. By ending emphatically with the microtonally altered second degree, we move away from both modernity and the deeper intention of the non-Western mode itself (and, by analogy, Islamic tenets). Set on a warpath with modernity and its postulates, a potential jihadist is born, waiting to be recruited and utilized for a dark cause.
