The director of the Sitwell Singers, Dexter Drown, asked me about the process of writing this piece at the premiere:

"What is the first step; how do you take the text and come up with the music you've written for us?"

"The thing that appealed to me most about the quote was how short it was - the words are: 'You pierce my soul; I am half-agony, half-hope; I have loved none but you.' I loved the succinctness of it, and when I was working on it with Howard [Skempton], he remarked that it was like a love letter... you read it over and over again because there are so many important words just in those three sentences. The music allows us to repeat it and explore it with different meaning every time."