The term Pangaea comes from the Greek pangaia, meaning "all earth," and was the name given to the theoretical single landmass that existed on Earth millions of years ago. According to the theory of plate tectonics, the Earth's outer shell is comprised of large plates that, in a sense, float on top of the Earth's less solid interior. As this molten interior rises into the cracks between the plates, it forces the plates apart. By this process, the original single continent of Pangaea was split apart to form the Atlantic Ocean, and as the individual plates continued to move, divide, and collide, the continents as we now know them gradually developed. The active nature of the Earth's crust and the slow, continuous movements of the various plates are evidenced today by earthquakes and other seismic activity that we are now capable of measuring.

The theory of Pangaea provides an appropriate metaphor for the compositional process. The single continent represents total potential, the full palette of possibilities from which a composer fashions a work of art. The gradual shaping of the work is the result of the continuous flow of thought that bubbles unseen beneath the surface of the music, until the composer's final product is created. Yet the composer knows that even this final product is not immutable, for each performance of a musical work is a new birth, bringing with it a new perspective and a new step in its evolution and experience. In this sense, the composer's written score is itself a Pangaea -- potential energy about to be set into motion by the musicians who bring it to life.

The orchestral work Pangaea explores density, expansion, and the evolution of structure and coherence from the full host of musical possibilities. It begins with an unmetred section that employs all twelve chromatic pitches and all possible simple intervals. Most of this musical density is quickly eliminated as the strings expand the music to the outer registers, providing the framework in which to build the piece. Gradually, this musical space is filled in by the full orchestra, which eventually comes to a consensus on the pitch D, at the end of the first slow section. The music then proceeds through a fast section, another slow section, and a final fast section, as it explores a long-range bass line of expanding intervals. In the course of this process, various melodic ideas emerge and assert themselves, then become subsumed into the overall texture. The closing fast section builds to a climactic series of repeated fortissimo notes from the full ensemble, then explodes into a rapid descent to a final unison A. This emphatic unison from the full orchestra is reminiscent of the A to which the orchestra tunes just before it brings a piece of music to life, leaving the listener with a sense of expectation, a sense that, like Pangaea in the moment before it divided, something big is about to happen.