Traces B is the second of three pieces for solo flute (the other two being Traces and Traces C) which together comprise the 'Traces' Cycle. The cycle has its origin in a memory dating from my late teens. During a walking holiday in the Lake District, I came across what my Ordnance Survey map told me was the track of a Roman road. Clearly discernible through the grass, it ran directly across the path I was taking and disappeared into the horizon. I was moved and intrigued by the presence of what had been a major thoroughfare in this now barren and deserted landscape. A single continuous rhythmic arch, corresponding to the Roman road of my memory, underlies all three pieces in the cycle. Just as the road I saw was the result of the effects of time and nature, the arch is subjected to several layers of variative activity. It undergoes up to three levels of rhythmic modification, and is also subjected to subsidiary grids controlling further rhythmic treatment, use of various performance techniques, dynamics and other features. The overlaying of these strata creates music, which, throughout the course of each piece, is clearly undergoing constant modification, complex enough to defy categorisation into structural hierarchies, creating the kind of formal ambiguity notable in much of my output in the ten years prior to 1991 . Traces B begins with much the same music as that which ends Traces. It is a more disparate and consciously virtuoso piece than the earlier work, and it this ver y richness that constantly threatens to undermine the work’s cohesion. The appearance of a lengthy, bravura penultimate section (marked maestoso and adumbrated in the previous sections) would seem at last to provide a focal point for the piece. This certainty is deflated in the static final section, in which crescendos and diminuendos provide subtle changes within the prevailing extremely low dynamic level. Traces B was given its first performance by Mario Caroli on 17th November 2001 at Spazionovecento, Cremona.