Dances, Hymns & Songs for Friendship is a string quartet in 6 movements.
Commissioned by Wigmore Hall, the Presteigne Festival and the Sacconi Chamber Music Festival, and written to celebrate the 25th anniversar of the Sacconi Quartet, it was composed in 2025 and first performed on 6th January 2026 at Wigmore Hall by the Sacconi Quartet.
Dances, songs & hymns for Friendship was written to celebrate 25 years since the founding of the Sacconi Quartet - with all original members! I started by coming to a rehearsal of the quartet, witnessing how they rehearsed Beethoven together, how they talked to each other both in and out of rehearsal time, made tea together, played their roles as quartet members and as friends. I thought of these 25 years of enduring friendship, all the different twists and turns of life they had seen each other through, and of my own closest friends and how those relationships deserved songs, dances and hymns to be written to them.
This quartet is written in 6 movements. The first is, SPIN, which starts with a fervent togetherness before each voice begins to spin its own yarn. SING is a song that sits between yearning, hope, and brief moments of serenity. PLAY is full of light and sparkle and shifting, dancing rhythmic underlay. STEP is a strident dance that turns a corner into a lightness of step that spins off into the distance. PRAY starts with a lilting off-kilter closely harmonised hymn and becomes a spacious song that always keeps a hymn nearby. The final movement is BE, in which a simple melodic fragment repeats, transforms, extends, and eventually is left just to be itself.