The term 'Garland' refers to the idea of a string of ornaments and embelishments. The object of this embelishment is the music of Matthew Locke (1622-1677), english composer of consort music. When I first started thinking about this piece two years ago, the music of Matthew Locke was constantly coming to my mind. I had just recently discovered his consort music, and I was quite taken by it. So it felt as a natural consequence to let his music influence this piece. Also, this being my first commission for an english ensemble, I felt an intuitive need to make some kind of link to the tradition of english music. There are however many ways of working with older music in this way, and I actually think the piece has developed in other directions than I had anticipated two years ago. My original impulse was to work with the quiet, poetical atmosphere in the fantazie-beginnings of the 1st, 3rd and 5th suite in the 'Consort of four parts'. This atmosphere sets the beginning in my piece, but it develops into more hard-edged nuances as my garland unfolds. I keep close to the lines in Lockes music, but I couldn't help let it take me into a world of conflict and disruption as well as the soft shadowland the piece started out in. Lockes music is most of the time present only as some faint, often undiscernible voice in the background, but I let this voice come to the front at times throughout the piece.

Initially, I wanted to use a chamber organ in the piece, to evoke the sound of continuo accompagnement. This would probably have made the link with Lockes sound world too obvious, so I decided to drop the idea. Instead, I let the continuo-idea transmute into something different altogether: In the beginning of the piece, the piano and  tuned percussion makes something one could call 'Inverted continuo'. Instead of being a bass fundament and harmonic backbone, as the continuo section is in early music, these instruments embellish the structure in the extreme treble register. They work with the same structure as the string section, but the different textures of sound makes it more into a vague double or some kind of harmonic shadow. This idea is governing the beginning of the piece, where the strings play a kind of high-pitched, warped version of Lockes music. After a while, this consort music becomes more clearly audible as the winds enter - brass presenting something close to the original version while woodwinds are covering it with a layer of distorted sounds. As this section of the piece develops, the pitch-range falls toward the middle, and vibraphone and piano present ornamented lines of the same material. The strings concludes this first section with a kind of liquified rendering of the slow introduction to the G minor suite in Lockes 'Consort of four parts', with wind and piano continuing their previous actions. This moves us attacca into the next section, where the idea of lines is multiplied as the instruments pair up in a gradually denser polyphonic web of leaping and twisting melodies. This web is eventually overtaken by piano and percussion, who act as cathalysts for a gathering of forces, where the whole ensemble comes together in a unified rythmical sequence. The whole ensemble except for one: the piano is the only instrument resisting this mass motion and gradually breaking away into a solo cadenza. The third section opens with percussion and piano punctuating the rest of the ensemble playing a distorted version of the introduction to Locke's D minor suite, before the energy is absorbed in a wave-like motion of harmonies . Out of this grows a little violin solo playing the opening bars of the F major suite. This falling sequence of 8 notes evolves into a canonic structure, first in the strings and then gaining momentum as the winds enter and the whole ensemble is engulfed in falling and rising Garlands of notes ending in a massive chord. This chord gives way to the final section, a new sequnce of slowly evolving harmonies, this time superimposed by muted strings ending the piece with a  haunting memory of Lockes D-minor music from 'Consort of four parts'.