It all started in 1979, with a commission for a short piece for soprano and bass clarinett based on a theme inspired by the paintings of Edvard Munch. During a stay in Trosa in the spring of 1979, I found a painting by him and also a text by George Rodenbach written in the same year (1890) Munch painted 'Natt i Saint-Cloud' [Night in Saint-Cloud] in Paris. Both works express the theme of loneliness and reflection in the evening, in solitude.

Later, the two performers premiering this work, 'Du Silence', wished to have a complementary work composed for them. I then chose a theme relating to midnight.

In 1984, I picked up the thread again and composed the 'Night Images Vocalis', based on a poem ('Öknens Djinn' [the Jinn of the desert]) by Bertil Malmberg, whereafter it seemed natural to add the morning.

As a child in the late 1940s, we lived in Bromma [a suburb of Stockholm] and over our house, at 5 a.m. every morning, an airplane passed approaching Stockholm Bromma Airport.

Thus, Tomas Tranströmer's poem constituted a natural connection to this, concluding, part of the 'From Dusk to Dawn'.