Traces C is the third of three pieces for solo flute (the other two being Traces and Traces B) 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 Sur vey 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. There are right from the start some clear differences between Traces C and its predecessors. The opening of Traces B seems to form a continuation of the final section of Traces, and it might be expected that the same would occur at the start of Traces C. Here, however, the only feature carried over from the end of Traces B is the use of descending glissandi on longer notes: it is not possible to prolong into the new piece the distant, almost valedictory music which concludes Traces B. This perhaps indicates how my thinking about the cycle had broadened and developed since starting work on it nearly 15 years previously. By 2006, I saw the 'Traces' cycle as an attempt to reconcile the nature of memory itself, and of my memory of the road in particular, with the dynamic nature of both an actual journey down the road and the nature of the listener’s experience of a musical performance. I wanted Traces C to be palpably the final component of the triptych, and as such it is concerned with disintegration, not just that of the road itself, but also of my memory of it, which by 2006, was nearly 40 years old. Although the musical language of Traces C of necessity continues that of the two previous components of the cycle, it also reflects some of the ways in which my compositional technique has changed and developed since the mid 1 990’s. As far as the music’s surface is concerned, some stylistic traits (such as the use of lengthy grace note groups) have been jettisoned, and a far greater emphasis placed on the flute’s lower register. Since Traces B and Traces (until its final section at least) both almost exclusively occupy the flute’s upper register, I decided I would redress the balance in the final work in the cycle. Thus the lower register functions in Traces C both as part of the large-scale pitch structure and as a means of determining the use of specific performing techniques. On a deeper level, Traces C is also the least narrative of the three works constituting the cycle. Indeed, from the opening bars, with their excess of information, its music seems to be moving towards the dissolution that forms the end of the piece. Traces C was given its first performance by Matteo Cesari at King's College, London on 20th June 2011 , as part of an event to launch Cesari's recording of the complete 'Traces' cycle and three other solo pieces.