Night and Silence is a set of nineteen pieces for solo piano. The title, derived originally from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is in this context primarily a reference to Wallace Stevens’ poem ‘Note on Moonlight’, and points to the relationship between the present piece and my orchestral work In Spite of the Mere Objectiveness of Things, whose title comes from the same poem: the serene opening movement was subsequently orchestrated to become the opening of the latter piece. Night and Silence consists of four sections: firstly, eleven very short pieces which each have a duration of a minute or less; secondly, six slightly longer (but still short) movements; thirdly, an extended set of variations that run without a break; and, finally, a single short movement which acts as a coda to the whole cycle.