Composer's Notes:Heavenly Things is my fourteenth song-cycle but the first with piano accompaniment. I mention this because when I was asked to write this piece my first reaction was ‘what can I make of amedium that seems to me quintessentially 19th century’ and I was doubtful that I could produce anything that I would be happy with. Then I went to hear Christopher Maltman and Malcolm Martineau and was so impressed by the magicand intensity of their performance that I saw a ‘way in’ to what at first had seemed a problem. The choice of poems was obviously going to be crucial and I chose the Donne Holy Sonnets because of the dramatic possibilities theyoffer and the huge range of emotion that they encompass. In these settings the piano is always more than a mere accompaniment it tends either to be in dialogue with the voice or to have its own musical agenda which the voicereacts to in an independent but parallel way. Geoffrey Burgon