The musical material derives from transformations of the carol melody, which only appears with any degree of literalness in a dream-like passage close to the beginning and vanishes – though, in some sense, its dna is present in every bar. The piece is through-composed and consists of slow – at times, elegiac – music flanking fast central episodes. Two chords, which seem to signify a kind of question at the very beginning, return twice, later in the work.