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Nachtgesang takes its title from a well-known poem by Goethe. The poem has five stanzas, each ending with the line ‘Schlafe! was willst du mehr?’ (Sleep, what more do you desire?). My piece also divides into five sections, each of which ends with a refrain. This is, at first, a series of quiet string chords; the second time a solo violin is added; then a solo viola, then a solo cello; the fifth and last time all these plus a surprise, which I will not reveal. Nachtgesang alludes to aspects of German Romanticism, with horn calls and sounds of nature, including two night birds, the Tawny Owl and the Nightingale. My Tawny Owl call on solo bassoon is almost the same as Janáček's in his On an Overgrown Path – but as he has notated the call so precisely, I could do nothing better. Throughout the piece a song gradually builds up, reaching its full statement in the final section.

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