The initial impetus for this piece arose in February 2022 when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began while the Quatour Danel were giving their latest performance of the complete Shostakovich string quartet cycle. The juxtaposition of outstanding performances of music by one of Russia’s greatest composers with the crass, brutal arrogance of Russia’s invasion gave rise in my mind to certain sonic ideas involving a bass voice and string quartet. Over the next eighteen months the text and dramatic scenario were developed in collaboration with writer Kim Ballard, with whom I had collaborated in the 1980s on the large-scale work The Kingdom of Bones (Страна Костей). Following numerous discussions, it was decided to cast the bass as a journalist who has been imprisoned and tortured for reporting on tyranny. He is not named, but in four different settings which form movements two, four, six and seven of this seven-movement piece he explores different aspects of tyranny and its effect on individuals. The text itself is an interesting mix of cento, poetry, prose and libretto while the title De Profundis (‘from the depths’) reflects the bass reporting from the musical depths on the evil depths into which mankind can sink.

In the first setting (Movement II), entitled A Career (with news headlines), the bass sings of his life as a reporter who has ‘…broadcast the truth, without reserve, without adornment, All across our global networks’. Many of the musical ideas in this setting are explored further in subsequent ones. The second setting (Movement IV) is entitled Fractured Lives (from a podcast) and begins and ends with short fragments of poetry in Russian by Anna Akhmatova, who suffered greatly in Stalin’s Russia. The text begins ‘That cruel epoch knocked me, like a river, off course…’ (‘Меня, как реку, Суровая эпоха повернула…’), the concept of something being knocked off course being reflected in solo musical lines that are ‘pushed around’ by other members of the quartet. Setting three (Movement VI) is headed Despair and Anger (from a podcast) and begins with a quotation from Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, written while he was in prison awaiting execution after having stood against corruption in the sixth century Ostrogothic court. Set in Latin, this opening uses non-metered notation and explores some of the lower parts of the bass register, which contrasts with the English text being set in a generally higher register. The final setting, The Protests Continue (on location), sees the bass move from an interior to an external position, where he witnesses a mass protest against tyranny. This brings to the protagonist’s mind lines from the poem ‘Todesfuge’ by
Holocaust survivor Paul Celan, which he relates in both German and English. The setting (and therefore the entire piece) ends first with the bass declaiming over the quartet the need for protest, which is then followed by the solo voice emerging from its lowest note to reflect on the cost of such protest with a quotation from setting one.

In addition to the above cycle of text settings, movements one, three and five form a second cycle of short fragments for the quartet alone, the first functioning as an introduction that is cut short while the other two are designed to suggest the continuation of the first movement. The final setting begins with this quartet music which signals the integration of the two cycles.

The piece bears the dedication:

for Alexei Navalny, and to the many other victims of Vladimir Putin.