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My work 'The Seventh Seal' (2020) was inspired by the famous Ingmar Bergman film of the same name (1957). When approached by double bassist Malachy Robinson with the idea of writing a concerto for cello, double bass and strings I immediately thought of how the two soloists could engage in a series of "conversations", and having had the Bergman film in mind for some time for a different project I thought of the many two-handed conversations there are in that work - for instance, between the Knight and Death (who play chess with each other), between the Knight and a young woman accused of witchcraft, between the knight's squire and a painter depicting gruesome events on the wall of a church, between the actor and his wife about blissfully domestic affairs, etc. Many of these conversations are about existential ideas - the existence of God versus nothingness; what is Death?; the difficulty of faith; the place of love.
I took a number of these conversations as starting points for this single-movement, multi-sectional, free-flowing work that explores the two solo instruments in terms of colour and expressiveness, exploits the tutti strung section in inventive ways, and seeks to present the the fear, the love, the tenderness, and the inevitability which mark the film so strongly.
'The Seventh Seal' was commissioned by the Irish Chamber Orchestra with funds from the Arts Council of Ireland.