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Following the example of Romantic piano pieces or Leider involving sentiments of loss, this piece presents its material in a series of refrains; the opening material acquires deeper resonances on each appearance, revealing itself in a transfiguration at the very end. This aspect of the piece, a recurrent ache, is reflected in the title, as in an allusion to the Elizabethan lutenist John Dowland, whose ‘Semper Dowland semper dolens’ occasionally informs the harmonic and timbral world of this piece. The central range of the piano is dampened until the coda, when a certain expressive veil is finally lifted. The broad structure of the piece is also hollow-centered: two large ‘wings’, each essentially describing a number of descending arcs, separated by a silence.

© Thomas Adès