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This work was composed for the Tredegar Town Band after a commission from my friend Richard Thomas. Later, I incorporated the music into the ballet score, Dark Arteries, for Rambert Dance Company.

Renamed ‘These Scars Across Your Heart’ the music forms the heart of the ballet: an elegy to people living in Britain’s ex-mining towns who, as a result of Thatcher’s dismantling and undermining of the coal fields, lost both their industry and their communities.

The title for this work is taken from the Oscar Wilde poem, From Spring Days to Winter:

But now with snow the tree is grey
Ah, Sadly now the throstle sings!
My love is dead: ah! Well-a-day,
See at her silent feet I lay
D dove with broken wings!
Ah, Love! Ah, Love! That thou wert slain-
Fond Dove, fond Dove return again.

Programme note by Gavin Higgins