At the beginning of 2023 there was a call to pitch a new ‘Canto Ostinato’ for the Simoen ten Holt 100th anniversary. I wasn’t selected, but I promised myself I would write a piece anyway. The scoring is for un-named instrumentation in five voices, one of which is intended for keyboard, with three or four players per part for the full blending and overlapping effect.
The title comes from Shelley’s Adonais.

“And others came… Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and veil’d Destinies,
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,
Came in slow pomp; the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.”