No Anthem was written for Ensemble Modern and premiered at the Acht Brüchken Festival 2015. In keeping with the festival’s theme, I was asked to write an anthem for a non-existent country. The instrumentation of No Anthem matches exactly the instrumentation of Louis Andriessen’s masterpiece De Staat, which was performed on the program’s second half.
Because the non-existent country I imagine has no borders, no passports, no military, no prime minister, no citizenship, and no anthem, I decided that the singers in the work would not sing text. It was my goal to remove sentiment from this work, to write an un-anthem that stripped all expressions of patriotism and nationalism from the music. The orchestration of No Anthem is designed so that the music will flow in circular currents, defining the musical boundaries of this non-existent place. It is my desire that upon hearing No Anthem you will not want to live in this nonexistent land and you certainly will not want to die for it. No Anthem is written in memory of Steve Martland.