Duo was written in November and December 1975, and was first performed by Christopher Rowland and myself at Birmingham Arts Lab in January 1976. Around that time there was a flurry of excited press speculation about a series of photographs which claimed to show the Loch Ness monster. In an idle moment I drew a squiggly line on the wall of my workroom - a stylised representation of Nessie's sensuous curves as popularly imagined - in other words, a series of gradually diminishing loops. It struck me that this would make an interesting model for a musical form which progressed by compression rather than by elaboration (which is the more common approach). This is how Duo works; or at least, it was planned that way. In the event I cheated here and there, overlapping loops in a few places; and one of the loops got out of hand, causing a bulge near the monster's rear end. However, the overall plan consists of nine loops of music and a short coda or tail (bad pun intended). Each loop is slightly more compressed and ordered than its predecessor, and the resulting piece moves from extravagance to economy, and from clutter to what I fondly imagine is clarity.

Duo was recorded in 2017 by violinist Malu Lin and yours truly, and can be heard on the Resonus Classics CD Relationships RES 10271 (issued in 2021), along with my other pieces for this combination: Echo (1997) and Farewell (2017)

Giles Swayne
2025

. . . a characteristically fertile, quickwitted, elegantly executed invention inspired by images of the Loch Ness monster.

- Financial Times

a splendid, extended work by Giles Swayne . . . where a personal language and expression are brilliantly matched.

- Daily Telegraph