Microscopic Negatives comprises nine short, interrelated movements, presented as four pairs arranged around a central movement. The corresponding movements are conceived as ‘image’ and ‘negative’, where a particular aspect of the character of the material in the ‘image’ is removed in the ‘negative’, such as instrumental colour. Other treatments include the condensing of the salient features of a quartet into a solo, and the refraction of a chorale-like movement via a procedure based on ring-modulation. The fifth movement takes aspects of each of the related pairs and superimposes them, drawing attention to their similarities before half of the music has been heard, with the result that the final four movements are at once new and familiar.