This piece is a paraphrase of a song that Wood wrote between 30 January and 1 February 1983 to a poem by Robert Graves called ‘Bird of Paradise’.

The music is continuous, but falls into five sections, of which the first threearevariations on the emerging material of the song. In the fourth (which is the loudest), the original vocal line may most clearly be heard: it has been somewhat extended both in length and in register. In the fifth andfinalsection, the pianoforte plays the song line in ...