Late Night Music (2025)
(for piano solo)

Recently, a friend asked me for music to accompany poems about silence. I remembered a trance-like movement called Meditation I had written, many years ago, as part of a dance-piece, and this in turn led me to music I had written around the same time for a film about the the architect Carlo Scarpa, accompanying images of gardens and water.I made versions of both pieces for solo piano, and found that I wanted to keep going, adding four further meditations.

The result is Late Night Music: around fifty minutes of quiet, contemplative piano music, more suited to meditation and relaxation than to the concert hall: six meditations involving simple repetition, and revelling in reverberation, with nearly-continuous use of the sustaining pedal. The effect is sometimes like ripples spreading from drops of water falling into a still pool.

This is something you might want to experience lying down, perhaps on the edge of sleep. The six meditations follow a journey through the night, gradually taking the listener towards deeper calm. The greatest stillness is reached in the middle of the piece, the fourth meditation; the final two meditations progress towards wakefulness and daylight.

Jonathan Dove, October 2025