"... she stood leering hideously, and much dust sodden with tears lay upon her shoulders."

"These snippets from Johann Heinrich Voss's translation of Hesiod's Shield of Hercules, where the din of battle is brought to a standstill for the wink of an eye, made me think of music that describes the 'inwardness' of a particular feeling, close to the much-cited metaphor of an entire life flitting past the inner eye in the space of a second, when, as in Hesiod, Atropos severs the thread of life. Viola and piano join forces on an equal basis to inscribe ever more lines and shapes which, however, relate in their inmost essence to intertwining circles laden with melancholy."
(Philipp Maintz)