Duo was written in November and December 1975, and was first performed by Christopher Rowland and myself at Birmingham Arts Lab on 7th January 1976. Around that time there was a flurry of excited press speculation about a series of photographs thought 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 curves as popularly imagined: a series of gradually diminishing loops. It struck me that this could also be seen as a model of a musical form which progressed by compression rather than by elaboration; and this is how Duo works. Or at least, it was planned that way. In the event I cheated here and there, overlapping the loops in a few places; and one of the loops got rather out of hand, causing a large bulge near the monster’s rear end. However, the overall plan consists of nine loops of music and a short coda (tail). 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 hope is clarity.

Giles Swayne 2008

. . . 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