Discipline and Punish
The composer describes the piece as "shockingly difficult to play ... [since] instruments are asked to negotiate unreasonably difficult passages and alarmingly fast tempi, often to the inexorable click of the trap set." Adams thought the first movement so difficult that he initially entitled it "Discipliner et Punir". This may also have been a reference to Michel Foucault's 1975 book "Discipline and Punish".