Sounds of my daughters' voices together with some of their more musical toys provide the main source material for 'Scherzo', this celebration of - or lament for - childhood. In their untransformed versions these two pools of material form the 'poles' of the work between which the music journeys over a variety of routes. Sometimes the transition is uncomplicated, children transforming directly into toys and vice versa, but usually a more meandering path is followed which passes through unfamiliar, 'equatorial' realms. At such points it is the pure musicality of the material which is of prime importance, rather than its poetic or anecdotal possibilities, though inevitably a juxtaposition of a sense of sublime innocence with a dark, half remembered world of times past is never very far below the surface. 'Scherzo' was composed in the Spring of 1992 in Studio 2 at the University of Birmingham, England, using a variety of digital and computer techniques, and was first performed at the University of East Anglia in the same year.