Nocturnal Scars (2022) - Samuel Mutter

Special thanks to these wonderful performers for all their hard work and dedication. I am forever grateful.
Rea Ábel (flute), Chang Liu (erhu), and Xiaoyan Luo (pipa)
This performance took place on April 15th, 2022
Program Notes:
It’s such a difficult subject. Human cruelty. How does one really speak to its immense volume, and its shocking impact? Perhaps art is the best way to discuss human cruelty, tension, hate, violence, war, genocide. Art is probably the best way to express the impact of these human atrocities.
The painting on the front page is entitled Movement II (circa 1985) by Irene Chou. I was struck by the piece’s starkness. The sharp contrasts between coal black, cloudy grey, and fleshy pinks and reds. There’s a rawness to this work of art that just fascinates me. I think it’s a fantastic representation of human cruelty over time. From day to day, year to year, generation to generation. The continuity of cruelty is a reality that shocks us even though it has existed for all of human history. The dark swirling patterns in Chou’s work could represent the fear, the tension, the anxiety that lingers, the hate that festers, and burns until it suddenly spirals out of control into the raw reds and pinks which could represent traumatic acts of violence.
Of course, this is just my interpretation of Chou’s work. I do not know what the artist herself wished to convey. Nonetheless, her work has inspired me to create my own art reflecting the subject of human cruelty, the continuity of cruelty. Fortunately, I do not speak from a place of having experienced such atrocities, but I do hope that the piece encourages thought and conversation around the ideas of hate, human cruelty, violence, genocide, and the trauma that stays with those who have lived through such horrible events. Nocturnal Scars is dedicated to them, those who have suffered and those who are still suffering at the hands of human hate and cruelty.
Nocturnal Scars is a piece in four movements. The first three of which can be performed in any order the players would like. Each starts off with a slow, steady build in tension, fear, and anxiety that is supposed to represent the black and grey swirls in Chou’s work. This build ends in an explosion of thornier material supposed to mimic the rawness of the reds and pinks used in Chou’s work. The fourth movement is supposed to give a sense of infinite continuation and variation that ends without feeling like an end has actually arrived as is unfortunately the case when it comes to human cruelty. It continues everyday. Somewhere people are still suffering at the hands of others.
As with any piece I write, how effectively I’m able to communicate my ideas to the audience is a challenge and in some ways a risk, an unknown. I hope that I will succeed, but perhaps I will not.
-Samuel Mutter