“The Sleep of Reason” (2026) for chamber orchestra

“The Sleep of Reason” (2026) for chamber orchestra

This piece draws its inspiration from the celebrated etching by Francisco Goya, plate 43 of his Los Caprichos, whose Spanish caption is usually rendered as El sueño de la razón produce monstruos — “The sleep of reason produces monsters.” The work has an unmistakably anti-utopian character. The noble ideals proclaimed in the eighteenth century — liberty, equality, fraternity — were, in the centuries that followed, twisted and drowned in the blood of millions; similarly, the music itself bears the marks of deformation, distortion, and defacement.

Although the distortion of musical elements is apparent from the very beginning, the true descent into this Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors begins with the altered sounds of La Marseillaise. It appears as if from nowhere, heralding the dawn of a “brave new world” in which black becomes white, wrong becomes right, and the face of the Mona Lisa is transformed into a grimace of “modernity,” complete with mustache and sunglasses.

This is the sleep — or dream — of reason through which humanity has been living since the age of the Enlightenment: an age that, in its distorted reflections, has often brought not light but deeper darkness. The message of the piece is direct and urgent: it is time to wake up and drive these monsters away.