When I began writing the first of these pieces, I had no idea what it was or where it was going. An arpeggiated figure serves as the basis for continuation of….something, but whatever it was, “it” determined what it was going to do next. (Of course, “it” was me all along—-my musical training and every other aspect of my personal history.) I wrote out the score in a kind of musical dictation, as the first chord unfolded, paused, started again, and gathered momentum before morphing into new shapes of the original idea. A photo of the turquoise-hued spiral galaxy labelled NGC 2997 in my pocket guide to astronomy furnished a title for the finished piece, as it invoked in me a serene wonder in both the universe of the mind and the universe of time and space. The next piece, “Saturn,” consists mainly of stark, block-like chords in a minor key, contrasting in every way with its predecessor. Again, it was only after finishing that I was reminded of Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia, where a winged figure sits brooding amid huge geometrical forms and implements for calculating the construction of something which can only be imagined by the artist himself. This seems to echo my own state of mind at certain points in the composing process. After the first delightful plunge into a new work comes a half for analysis, planning, and sometimes even moodiness, as I take stock of my composing materials. In astrology, which I was also studying back then, Saturn can refer to mortification, fixed form, and the grave. In a sense, the life-giving joy of creation must seek a way to revive its generating energy after the stasis needed for cogitation before it can reach its fulfillment. The third piece, “The Work of Sun,” is a term used in the alchemical tradition. Again, metaphor is the main thing. Instead of transforming “base matter” into actual gold, some scholars say that the alchemical writings should be studied as the artfully disguised path to enlightened consciousness. In the slow unfolding of the third piece, I imagined the germination of a seed as the leaves unfold to the sun’s rays and to the universe at large, at the same time its roots ground it to the physical world, to planet Earth.