 "The departed Hartmann's creative spirit draws me to the skulls, and the skulls
glow softly from within." These words of Mussorgsky's drew me to the eight
section of the "Pictures from an Exhibition", inspired by the paintings
of Viktor Hartmann, and subtitled "Con Mortuis in Lingua Mortua" ("with
the dead in a dead language").
I treat Mussorgsky's remarkable chordal succession in a semi-serial fashion
as the basis for 8 variations which incorporate a fughetta (“The Catacombs
Fugue”) and a lullaby (“Berceuse funèbre”). The quiet ending is directly quoted
from Mussorgsky – but in inversion (through a glass, darkly).
“Catacombs” was commissioned in 1994 by Dublin's Project Arts Centre for the
ensemble Sequenza, now (perhaps appropriately) defunct. 
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