L'homme armé
The work incorporates eclectic musical influences, ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach and Igor Stravinsky to the old Netherlands chanson "L'homme armé" and 20th-century boogie-woogie. The work opens with 144 iterations of the same chord played fortissimo (very loud) and features an extended solo for two large metal boxes played with hammers. The texts are both sung and spoken. The four sections of the work incorporate various texts, with the dates of composition of each section in parentheses: