Born in 1938, the American composer John Harbison has long enjoyed distinction in many aspects of music. He wrote his Four Songs of Solitude for his wife, the violinist Rose Mary Harbison, insisting that they are in essence songs. Twilight Music, for violin, horn and piano, is in part a reaction to larger scale orchestral works with which the composer had recently been occupied, while Variations draws inspiration from a statue of the Caananite fertility goddess dancing.