A Small Infinite

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Score excerpt

Solo violoncello · ca. 6 minutes · 2025

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About the work

Composer’s note

Drawing on Irish poet Pádraig J. Daly’s poem ‘For Sadhbh, aged 5’, A Small Infinite inhabits the fragile, hermetic world of a child’s imagination. The image of a swan on a lake becomes a metaphor for the stillness and sudden ripples of a child’s mind at play.

The music draws on my experience of watching my children absorbed in ‘ritual play’: held within an imagined world, their attention complete, yet the spell easily broken. The piece explores the tension between this inward dream state and the inevitable intrusion of the observer.

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Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash.