Recording of American Descent (Andrew Rindfleisch)
A work in five movements scored for 13 players
Premiered in October of 2025
0:00 - I. Descending
7:28 - II. Bread and Circuses
11:06 - III. Interlude: Reminiscence
19:21 - IV. Cruelty
23:24 - V. Ascending
PROGRAM NOTE
AMERICAN DESCENT
American Descent is a work scored for a sinfonietta of 13 players- commissioned by the NO EXIT New Music Ensemble, whose instrumentalists form the core of this premiere performance. A five-movement work, American Descent explores the precipitous decline of a once prosperous society into a culture of chaos, division and violence, where previously thriving communities become powerless in the shadow of feckless and immoral leadership. Each of the work’s five movements is a kind of reflection on this seemingly unending cycle of turmoil.
I. Descending The opening movement reveals music that depicts a rapid and frightening descent into the confusion, fear and alarm of a downward spiraling society, unable to slow or stop its decline.
II. Bread and Circuses The second movement paints a culture that consumes disinformation as a form of grotesque entertainment. The endless cycles of hysteria and grievance coupled with the dishonesty of broadcast outlets (and the social media mobs that spread them), reveal the addiction of a society of junkies, happily caught in a delirium of frenzied lies and hypocrisy.
III. Interlude: Reminiscence Here, at the work’s center, a distant, far-away music appears as a dream-like interruption of sentiment and reminiscence.
IV. Cruelty The fifth movement explores the ease with which a culture engages in acts of cruelty so regularly, the behavior becomes ubiquitous. The resulting apathy and numbing effect of the frequency of such acts is revealed here in the colors of a benumbed orchestration.
V. Ascending In the final movement, a glimmer of optimism unfolds in a music that, little by little, grows in volume, intensity and fortitude around a single pitch. From a distant fragmented opening, the music steadily moves its way to a unified sound-world of strength and possibility.
-- from the composer's YouTube release
