string fantasy written for Stephen Maddock and the Oxford String Orchestra; duration: c.8'

Zwoele Tonen does not mean "twelve tones". Zwoele Tonen has no programme. Zwoele Tonen is music made up of three main melodies with various modal harmonies set in conflicting metres. The tension between 4/2, 12/8 and 3/4, and the resulting cross-rhythms and syncopated accents serve to articulate the tonal scheme - Ab/E/B/chromatic - which is heard condensed into a repeating four-bar sequence formed by the third melody in canon. The contextual development of the three melodies leads to a final section where they are all played simultaneously, but it is the subsidiary ideas which have the final word. Zwoele Tonen is a Flemish title roughly translatable as "sultry tunes".