This little piece for strings was written in 1997 for Bill Leary and the string ensemble of Ampleforth College, near York. It lasts about three minutes, and consists of a five-bar ground bass which rises by a semitone on each repetition until, after sixty bars, it reaches the octave above; whereupon it is turned upside-down. The process is repeated in inversion – the pitch sinking one semitone on each repetition of the ground – until, after another sixty bars, the home keynote of G is arrived at. A short and thrilling coda rounds off the piece. In sixteenth century English the word ‘maggot’ was used to mean “a whimsical or perverse fancy” (Oxford English Dictionary definition) – mechanical, in this case, because of the way the ground bass rises and falls through an octave.

Giles Swayne 2008