Erykah Badu - On & On [Cleopatra flip]

Premiered by the Fidelio Trio 
Live at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire 25/04/22

Darragh Morgan - Violin
Tim Gill - Cello
Mary Dullea - Piano

Euryale

Dub Snitches

Anonymous text:

Le Peintre passerait pour un homme incomparable 
Si par son art, il pouvait peindre ce mouvement 
Moi bien plus adroit et cent fois plus admirable
Je fais sans me mouvoir cet effet surprenant.

Performed by Lady Clare's Consort, conducted by Jasper Schoff, Croydon Minster, 3/2/24
Recording by Sam Hunt

Par Son Art: A Year of Song in Renaissance France

Par Son Art - for double SATB choir (2024)

A setting of words by Richard Crashaw:

The world's light shines, shine as it will,
The world will love its darkness still.
I doubt though when the world's in hell,
It will not love its darkness half so well. Amen.

Performed by Guildford Cathedral Choir, conducted by Katherine Dienes-Williams, in Guildford Cathedral on 14/2/24
Recording courtesy of BBC Radio 3

Half so well - for SATB choir and organ pedals (2023)

Speed garage and breaks mix

This piece is in two halves, both starting with the same percussion gesture. Each half takes the material on different journeys, the first part ending calmly, and the second ending riotously. The title refers to the quicksilver changes between musical ideas throughout - nothing fully settles, or is heard the same way twice.


Performed by Plus-Minus Ensemble, at Milton Court Concert Hall, 21/6/24

Vicky Wright - Clarinet/Bass Clarinet
Primož Sukič - Electric Guitar
Joe Richards - Percussion
Mira Benjamin - Violin
Alice Purton - Cello
Mark Knoop - Conductor

Whistle-Stop - for mixed quintet (2024)

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)

for SATB choir, strings, harp, and percussion

Setting fragments of texts by Thomas Traherne, Richard Crashaw, John Bunyan, William Blake, and an anonymous haiku:

 Lord!
 O hear how short I breathe!
 What will Wrath's sea, so foully fierce, not dare?
 See how I tremble here beneath
 A sin! its ugly face
 More terror than its dwelling-place
 Contains, (O dreadful sin)
 Within!

 As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted
 on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down
 in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream.

 From dust I rise,
 And out of nothing now awake,
 The Sun arises in the East
 Cloth'd in robes of blood and gold,
 Crown'd with warlike fires and raging desires,
 Leading towards the unknown;
 Hope's path carved anew.


Commissioned and performed by Bedford Choral Society and Bedford Sinfonia, conducted by Ian Smith in Bedford Corn Exchange on 21/6/25

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

Luca Zucchi

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