This Is Just to Say was written for Peter Pears.  The thrill of working with this celebrated artist produced two further, briefer cycles, for his collaboration with Osian Ellis's harp (The Blue Doom of Summer, op. 35/1 and Willow Cycle, op. 35/2));  and then a third, The Noon's Repose, whose final song, virtually a mini-cantata setting On a Drop of Dew by Marvell, was dedicated to Britten's memory.  This deceptively fragile piece was laden with unsuspected potential.  It yielded the heart of a later piece (Ode, op. 45) for Pears's 60th birthday;  and the nub of something utterly antithetical, an extended Sonata movement for horn and orchestra (op. 43a) that eventually stood as the first movement of a concerto. 

The two smaller choral pieces, The Consolation of Music, op. 38/1 and He-She-Together, op. 38/2, are spin-offs, side-effects, sometimes gathering in and rounding off old material, from this diverse and confusing time in which I had a sense of losing direction, even of losing self.