From the Shadowland consists of six short piano pieces supplemented by the lengthier and more complex
Fountain of Prophecy and
Fairy Ring (published separately). All eight pieces, written between 1975 and 1990, convey a darkly mysterious and often delicately poignant mood. Ford has taken as his point of departure the programmatic character piece of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, forging from historical idioms a personal post-romantic style with an unmistakably Gallic (and intermittently Iberian) flavor.
"Tombeau" is a lament whose obsessive melodic motif recalls the fixedly pensive theme of the "Allegretto" from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.
