'Línte' (2016) was written as a gift for Greg Ellis, 1st violinist of the Vanbrugh Quartet. Greg announced in 2015 that he would be leaving the Vanbrugh at the end of the 2016/17 season after more than 30 years with the group. In that time the Vanbrugh has premiered nearly a dozen of my works and my relationship with them is one of the longest and most fruitful of my career.
I wanted to write something which would feature Greg as the quartet’s leader and decided to look at types of unaccompanied choral singing which have a follow-the-leader style, such as Scottish Psalm Singing and Kentucky Lined-Out Hymnody. It was an old American gospel tune called ‘I am a poor pilgrim of sorrow’ which I decided to base my quartet upon – passages of music reflecting the lined-out hymnody style (rhythmically complex, and occasionally somewhat blurred harmonically) alternate with contrasting sections, both texturally (focusing on the leader alone) and musically.
Línte means lines in Irish.
