Prologue:
Built upon a rather exotic sounding invented scale, conjuring images of Kubla Khan’s stately pleasure dome and the running water of Alph the sacred river.
Aria:
Gardens bright with sinuous rills and incense-bearing trees. A much warmer, sunnier music contrasts with the concentrated austerity of the Prologue
Toccata:
A savage chasm. A woman wails for her demon lover. Seething with ceaseless turmoil, a mighty fountain is momentarily forced, huge fragments vaulting like rebounding hail.
Elegy:
Behold! A miracle of rare device, a sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice. This whole movement is built rather economically on only four notes, C,G,F#,B (the main motif from the Toccata movement).
Epilogue:
'Wave a circle round him thrice
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of paradise.'
‘An imaginative use of instrumental colour, figuration and melodic material…’ - British Music Society News