The idea for this work occurred to me after Joan Lluna proposed that a clarinet quintet for our time needs an additional aspect. After an exhaustive period thinking about and writing for the voice, I found myself returning to concert music wanting to incorporate the same multidisciplinary potential I love so with the voice into an instrumental work. I was delighted when Joan suggested the Brodsky Quartet, as I had much admired their playing especially from memory, and I began to perceive a theatrical aspect to the presentation.

It was early in 2003, and the world was yet again facing a war imposed by a super-power. Whatever the justification, I knew many would die, as they have done and ever will do, when people contemplate such actions. I asked myself, what can music place against such cataclysmic events? Today the words art and entertainment are used almost interchangeably, but I wanted to try to articulate an idea which transcends our insatiable need for visceral stimulation, and instead proposes reflection instead of reaction.

The work's structure grew in an opposite direction to most in my experience: the sequence of five movements, which began slowly, became slower and slower, as if simplifying and emptying out, rather than moving between ever increasing climaxes. And there was one recurring image in my head, of the faces of the quartet not playing but instead listening as the clarinet approached his own final silence.

in a theatrical presentation, played from memory, with specially designed screens placed either side of the stage behind which the quartet emerge from and disappear behind.

as a multi-media presentation, played live from memory by the clarinet, with the string quartet recorded on video projected behind.

The first movement, Lachrymae, begins with the cellist alone on stage. The other instruments enter one by one, and the music is suffused with a single melodic idea which rises and falls continuously. The clarinet enters on an impossibly long and high note, creating a new emotional response from the quartet. The second half of the movement returns to the motif against which three of the instruments seem to plead, but the result is inevitable.

The second movement is called Soliloquy: Song of the Anchorite. In medeval times, an anchorite was a nun tied to a church or abbey. In some extreme cases, she was walled in to her living space, which she never left. The clarinet plays simple melodies out of very few notes, suspended by the quartet playing in different metres, often playing in duos. At the end, the simple, repeated figuration of the strings disappears into gesture with no sound. It may be seen and heard here.

The third movement is a Chorale, entitled The Soft Cathedral. The image for me fuses the vast and grand traditional cathedral acoustic space with a human body. In contrast to the preceding movement, all five players play consistently. The texture of the quartet expresses a vast echoing acoustic, while the clarinet line seems more personal and intimate.

The fourth movement, Exeunt Omnes, is a dirge in the sense that it is based on the repetition and development of a very short musical idea. The clarinet enters after a climax, and each of the strings plays a farewell before leaving the stage. However, the strings play from off-stage in the coda, while the clarinet continues to articulate notes they have ceased to play. The sound of the quartet lingers in the distance enforcing the clarinet's final dying gesture.