I began writing Litany at the end of a rather dark time in my life. As I sat down to write again after an unproductive spell, the plainchant melody Dies Irae seemed to lodge itself in my mind and crowd out all other musical ideas. The result was a musical journey that begins slowly, quietly and ominously, transitions to a more optimistic, pop-like, quasi-minimalist middle section, and ends serenely but with an echo of the foreboding mood of the beginning.