Composed in 2024 

Duration: 6'

Contrabass Clarinet - Scott Lygate 

Violin - Gordon Bragg

Viola - Ruth Gibson 

Cello - Christian Elliott 

Dumfries House Estate, Ayrshire

10 August 2024

Performed as part of The Cumnock Tryst International Summer School for Composers

With thanks to Sir James MacMillan and Oscar Bettison for their guidance in this project, and Rufus Sullivan for making the summer school run smoothly.

Concert video and recording available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irYoZDgqVKw&t=0s 

The other crag is lower - you will see, Odysseus -

though both lie side-by-side, an arrow-shot apart.

Atop it a great fig-tree rises, shaggy with leaves,

beneath it awesome Charybdis gulps the dark water down.

Three times a day she vomits it up, three times she gulps it down,

that terror! Don't be there when the whirlpool swallows down -

not even the earthquake god could save you from disaster.

No, hug Scylla's crag - sail on past her - top speed!

Better by far to lose six men and keep your ship

than lose your entire crew.

- Circe to Odysseus, The Odyssey, Homer (trans. Fagles)