In CHETIRI (FOUR), a single impulse gives rise to four ‘elemental’ movements, based on haiku poems by the Macedonian writer Vladimir Martinovski. It was commissioned by the New London Chamber Choir, and the specific/unusual combination of a relatively large vocal group and a string quartet (by its nature, a more intimate, chamber music medium) was influential in generating various aspects of the piece. This complements the four interrelated poems: breaths are paralleled in waves; a ‘flying’ thought is brought back to earth by a raindrop; a bee falling through a black hole/into earth; light and sound on either side of midnight … Some aspects of the music specifically relate to the text: for example, the growing, expanding breaths/waves in the first movement, or the extreme textural contrasts in the third; in another way, the music and text are related through both breaking down and exploring the words/sounds – single phonemes, transitions, syllables are used to create texture, and similarly, a net of harmonic relationships is built connecting harmonic series, resonances based on the tuning (pure fifths) of the string instruments, and equal temperament.