My invaluable publisher, PWM, invited me to write a collection of pieces with young instrumentalists in mind. They suggested the guitar, given my education. I liked the idea. I had thought about it before. Specifically, I thought that one of the reasons many musicians are reluctant to engage with so-called "new music" is the lack of this music in forms that are readible and feasible at all stages of learning, including the very earliest. In other words, the quite common belief that the latest music is a field accessible only and exclusively for professionals, preferably top-class virtuosos and initiated enthusiasts, serves no one. And unfortunately, this belief does not come from nowhere, and composers bear considerable responsibility for it. That is, the lack of literature is both a cause and an effect here. Performers are afraid of the challenges posed by newer works because they feel incompetent, and creators fear the challenges posed by the need to distill and reduce certain elements of the work for its greater accessibility in…the same sense of incompetence. Reduction and distillation are not simple matters, and it does not help that the not so rare (and not at all new) belief among creators that complication is an inalienable essence and a necessary condition in their work and progress. Sometimes it is indeed (which is a separate, lengthy topic: to what extent progress is synonymous with increasing complexity and to what extent progress is a valid category in thinking about history), but it can also be a convenient smokescreen – for a lack of ideas, complexes, fatigue, laziness, wounded pride, etc. Every composer, or anyone who has tried to write something, will know what I am talking about.

So, this is how I understand the task and with these thoughts I undertake it.

Not without fear.