'Shy Beginnings' explores the feeling of being shy or isolated from others and sense of inner frustration that this often sets off. 

The piece was written for and first performed by the organist Sam Jones in March 2022 in Clare College Chapel, Cambridge. This recording was made at a recital of 'new music' he gave at Jesus College's Chapel later that same month.

Shy Beginnings (for Organ)

This piece is a musical reaction to the last section (transcribed below) of T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Hollow Men’ (1925). Inspired by Eliot’s combination of vernacular texts (a nursery rhyme) and texts of ‘higher’ cultural status (the Lord’s Prayer), this piece pairs string quartet – the epitome of western art music – with fragments of a drum kit (suspended cymbal, cow bell and kick bass drum). The music, reflecting much of Eliot’s poetry, explores the idea of bathos by deliberately undermining climactic passages (e.g., the last four bars of the middle section), often through sharp contrasts in dynamics and texture. Engaging with Eliot’s textual references, much of the musical material is derived from the nursery rhyme ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush’, giving the first two sections a sense of childish excitement. This feeling is undermined by the final slow section where the nursery rhyme is abstracted further through rhythmic augmentation and rhythmic unison, imbuing it with a contrasting sense of solemnity (similar in feel to a funeral march). In this section the ‘mulberry bush’ theme is transformed into plainchant (reflecting Eliot’s religious imagery), creating a tension between the ‘childish’ associations of the nursery rhyme and the ‘serious’ religious associations of plainchant. Like the poem, this piece explores and questions traditional notions relating to life and death, suggesting, instead, a more transient model.

The piece was premiered on 15th March by Jacqueline Seki, Daphne Delfas, Alma Vink, Zak El-Shirbiny and George Wise.

The Prickly Pear (for String Quartet and Percussion)

This piece, written in the style of Purcell, is a setting of Catullus' poem 'Let us Live, My Lesbia'. The text setting is ridiculously overtop, full of tongue twisters and fast scalic passages - enjoy!

It is played here by James Kitchingman (tenor), Raphael Herberg (cello) and Daniel Blaze (harpsichord).

Let Us Live, My Lesbia (for Tenor, Harpsichord and Continuo)

Harmonica by Dylan Rendell, lead vocals and all other instruments by Luca Zucchi. Recorded at Pirate Studios by Jake Oppenheimer.

Photo by Hebe Jones!

Life Can Be So Cruel (feat. Dylan Rendell)

This piece is a setting of a rare early Italian Futurist poem by Libero Altomare. I was particularly drawn to Il Passato because it seemed to express the archetypal disdain held by Futurists for ‘the past’. In setting this poem for choir, something often associated with the church and the origins of the western musical tradition, I deliberately aimed to undermine the Futurist aesthetic embodied by the text, creating a tension between Altomare’s total rejection of ‘the past’ and the yearning quality of the music. Exploring the concept of time, the piece’s opening explores a series of ostinati which gradually expand into a dense 8-part choral texture. Just at this moment, the texture collapses into a mess of aleatoric whispers and sung mutters, reflecting the text ‘bigotto lacrimoso che biascica un rosario di rimorsi’ (tearful bigot who mutters a rosary of remorse). Generally, the music tends toward a static harmonic rhythm, exploring different modes (reminiscent of medieval plainchant), in order to emphasise the ‘immovable’ quality of the past. A final plaintive section sees return of similar modal ostinati, this time with the melody in the tenors. Reflecting the text the melody gradually fragments and breaks down until the music gradually fades out.

'Il Passato' was commissioned and conducted by Liam Lichy-Lightman, receiving its premier on 13/11/2024 at St. James' Sussex Gardens.

Il Passato (for Mixed Choir)

The title of the piece is a quotation from Coleridge’s (1772-1834) poem This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison (1797). The poem tells of a day when, due to poor health, Coleridge wasn’t able to go out for a walk with his friends and instead was forced to rest in a garden in the shade of a lime-tree. Under the tree he imagined the landscape that his friends, including the poet Wordsworth (1770-1850), were walking through. Inspired by this story, my piece depicts an imaginary landscape, depicting a variety of different natural imagery, e.g., waves, birdsong, hilly fields and meadows, etc.. Pushing against this idea of Romantic natural beauty, the piece was born out of a technical study of Stravinskian hexachordal rotations, which provide the harmonic grounding for the majority of the piece. As such, the opposing qualities of Romantic day-dreaming and modernist quasi-mathematical techniques create a tension that defines the piece’s character.

The piece was premiered by conductor Jess Hoskins and harp soloist Katie Sherratt at the Royal Academy of Music on 10/01/2025.

The Many-Steepled Tract Magnificent (for Chamber Orchestra with Harp Solo)

This piece was commissioned to be performed alongside Hans Abrahamsen’s 6 Pieces for Horn Trio (1984), an opportunity that offered several stirring provocations. In particular, I wanted to find a way of exploring the horn trio’s inextricable associations with Romanticism without abandoning or undermining my own contemporary idiom.

Whilst writing the piece, Abrahamsen encouraged me to give thought to the contrasting timbral qualities of the horn’s different ranges: the grittiness of its low range, the lyrical beauty of its middle, and the piercing intensity at its highest. For me, Romantic music is characterised by a similar opposition between extreme lyricism but also a chilling darkness, as exemplified in Brahms’ Horn Trio (1865). As such, my piece uses sonata form – the Romantic structure par excellence – to create a dialogue between these two contrasting characters; a dialogue pushed to its logical extremes at the end of the development where the horn descends from the top to the bottom of its tessitura.

This performance was given by violinist Marie Scheer, horn player Chloe Harrison and pianist Milda Daunoraite at the Royal Academy of Music on the 15th March 2025.

Sonata (for Horn Trio)

I was inspired to write this piece after three years of studying and learning to write fugues in the style of Bach. Having learnt rules, I now wanted to break them. So, I decided to destroy a fugue I had written, based on a theme by Henry Purcell (1659-1695). I played with taking it in different directions, messing around with the harmony and rhythms and seeing how far I could push it without losing the moment that you get from strict counterpoint. At points the music sounds a bit like Ligeti, at others like Nancarrow, and every now and then the music slides back into Purcell or Bach. It is very important that the fugue should not be played lightly in an early music / HIP style. Instead, it should be played with extreme vigour and a sort of folk-like character – a bit like Bartok or in Stuart’s words ‘with a bit of manure’.

Once I had written the fugue, I decided to add a slow introductory Prelude. This section focuses on repeating harmonic patterns and sequences that grow and then fade away, eventually slipping unexpectedly into a pseudo-Baroque perfect cadence. Much of the harmonic language and play between the instruments in this section was inspired by Purcell’s viol fantasias. Reflecting this the music is full of suspensions, appoggiaturas and a number of carefully placed false relations.

This performance was given by flautist Jamie McClenaghan, clarinetist Stuart King, violinist Ester Stålberg and cellist Clare O'Connell at the Royal Academy of Music on 29/04/25

Quasi una Fuga (for flute, clarinet, violin and cello)

This piece, as the title suggests, is composed of fragments of musical material from lots of different pieces. The motif to which the music constantly returns is inspired by the third movement of Debussy’s ‘Children’s Corner’, entitled ‘The Snow is Dancing’. As well as this, the piece contains references to the music of Bartok, Britten, Boulez, Ligeti, May, Reich and Wolf, among others. The music is inspired by the sounds of music practice, in which short bursts of material are constantly repeated and juxtaposed in a stark relentless manor.

This performance was given by saxophonist Rob Burton, pianist Tammas Slater, percussionist Elinor Mason, harpist Bonnie Scott and conductor Alex Papp at the Royal Academy of Music on 01/05/25.

Luca Zucchi

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