'Sleep Now, Baby Beast' for String quartet
Duration of 10 minutes - Commissioned by Gaudeamus Festival​​

For this work, I was drawn to the idea of rendering something rough or harsh in a tender or subtle way. The music unfolds within this tension, working with contrasting gestures that fail to separate completely and with similar forms of behaviour emerging from different sources, that never fully merge into one another.

 

As the title suggests, the piece moves between tenderness and rawness. The “baby beast” is both vulnerable and unruly: something that can be shaped, but not entirely controlled. The result is a sound world that is at once intimate and resistant, where softness and friction coexist.

 

Throughout the piece, material transforms through imitation. String gestures echo one another, but never exactly. Vocal gestures imitate the behaviour of string instruments, yet never fully coincide with them. Small differences accumulate, and what seems familiar becomes subtly altered as material is continually reinterpreted.

 

Ultimately, the piece explores not opposites themselves, but opposites failing to separate completely.