National Gallery Project 2025

Inspired by Salvator Rosa’s painting 'Witches at their Incantations', the main idea I incorporated into my piece is the very dark colours in the painting, which I portrayed through chromatic harmonies and extended techniques, such as sul ponticello and pizzicato. Wavering glissandi and dissonant clusters create the eerie and unnatural atmospheric sounds of the witches and monsters. In contrast to this, I use harsh snap pizzicato to portray the terrible horrors taking place in the painting. The final section of the piece uses polyrhythms and fast runs to create a sense of chaos and terror, before ending the piece with unsettling, dissonant sul tasto textures.

This piece for string quartet was written to be performed in the National Gallery on 28th February 2025.