Nocturnal Scherzo, a single movement originally written for string quartet, was premiered in 1986 at the Little Missenden Festival by the Brindisi Quartet, led by Jacqueline Shave (later director of the Britten Sinfonia). A note accompanying the manuscript score in Dixon’s archive sheds some light on her compositional method:

It seems to me that no music is truly abstract. Pieces which have no words or ‘programme’ must be a condensation either of past experience or of processes going on in the psyche. When I write music intended to be abstract, an exposition of the main themes materialises before I feel any need to question what I am writing. Then I find it difficult to continue until I have asked myself what the themes seem to signify. Dream-like images emerge in my mind, and from that part of the process develop the ideas of how to use the themes.

The note goes on to explain the dream sequence underlying the Nocturnal Scherzo and its symbolic significance, representing the contest and reconciliation of two halves of the psyche:

From a ‘sleep’ theme a slow rising motif suddenly erupts into action. Out of a jack-in-the-box bursts Pierrot, with his white face, his funny gait and his sad little song. He is swept off stage by the macho man whose theme in the cello verges on the bombastic. Pierrot climbs the stage curtains and swings up there, mocking the macho man. Eventually he responds to the macho’s angry call, not to assume unfair advantage, but to come down. They try on each other’s themes, like hats. Scarcely has a harmonious contrapuntal synthesis of their themes developed before the ‘sleep’ theme calls and the lid of the box slowly and gently closes down on them.

This vignette, investing an apparently trivial piece of commedia dell’arte with a deeper psychological meaning, gives an insight into the emotinal significance she attached to the contrapuntal interplay and resolution of musical themes. The Nocturnal Scherzo was subsequently performed in St Anne and St Agnes church in London in 1992 by the De Beauvoir Quartet, and in 2020 at St George’s Bristol, by the Villiers Quartet, who have recorded it on their disc of Ailsa Dixon’s chamber music, released on the Resonus Label in 2025. In 2022 Joshua Balance arranged the Nocturnal Scherzo for string orchestra for a performance by the New London Orchestra at the High Barnet Chamber Music Festival. © Josie Dixon (please credit if using this programme note) A version of this work for string quartet is also available. The quartet version of this work is featured on The Spirit of Love: Chamber Music by Ailsa Dixon by The Villiers Quartet, released on Resonus Classics, 22 August 2025.