Circle of silence, which was commissioned by the King's Singers, was written in Ghana between January and May, 1991. It was first performed by them at Symphony Hall in Boston on October 20th 1991. It is a tiny musical drama for six solo voices, charting the progression of a life from birth to senility and death. It lasts about twenty minutes.

There are nine stanzas, of which the middle seven correspond to the Seven ages of man in Jaques' "All the world's a stage" speech in Shakespeare's As you like it. The first and ninth stanzas represent the void of unconsciousness - the circle of silence which surrounds our brief lives.,

Although partly autobiographical (of necessity), the text is not literally so, and refers directly to no living person. In the first and ninth stanzas I have used a series of nonsense syllables. Throughout the piece there are brief quotations from pendulous buttocks and pompous paunches.