Programme Note

This piece began with its second movement which I originally wrote for a workshop at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, organised by the Society for the Promotion of New Music in 1998. I always imagined this short piece to be a fragment or off-cut from a potentially larger work (the ‘scherzo’ perhaps) and immediately began thinking about a larger context for it. I then wrote two other movements, which together with the existing one, seemed to form a miniature sonata without finale. Technically, I was very keen to exploit the ‘single line’ approach, so the challenge was to imply the harmony, using as little multiple stopping as I could get away with, almost as if the piano part to this imaginary sonata had been ‘lost’ and only the cello part preserved – thus the title suggested itself.

This is a sample only. Click here to download the complete score from Boosey & Hawkes.