Parts available (NOV120161-01). This work was written during the spring of 1964, and was commissioned by the artist, Maurice de Sausmarez, in memory of his mother, Jessie Rose de Sausmarez. The first performance took place inLondon during the same year. The work is a kind of epitaph or memorial and each movement tries to express a different aspect of grief culminating in a more extended elegiac fugue.
All seven variations are based on a singleseries of notes, and the series is used both thematically and as a structural basis. There is therefore no 'theme' in the traditional sense, and in this respect the work follows the practice of many modern essays in variationform.