Inspired by a Renaissance motet, Already it is dusk is a compact single movement whose ideas, with folk and sacred overtones, alternate before conflicting in a fraught central section and moving apart in the conclusion. With a variety of allusions to Beethoven, Quasi una fantasia unfolds over 4 movements, the funereal tread of its Largo making way for an often aggressive Deciso then an eloquent Arioso, before the Allegro attempts a synthesis fulfilled only by a fatalistic return to the beginning