In 2017, composer Dániel Péter Biró began developing a series based on philosophical texts by Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Ethica Composition Cycle (ongoing) explores Spinoza’s philosophy of the mind alongside the historical dilemma of a 17th-century Jewish immigrant in the Netherlands and from the perspective of a modern globalized existence. In this lunchtime seminar, Biró will discuss how the composition relates to historical and contemporary questions of immigration and belonging, mind and spirit, and how his studies of Jewish and Islamic chant traditions have influenced the music.