In 1958 I discovered Jean Cocteau's "Orphee" and it changed my whole view of art. Much of what happens in Nocturnal No. 1 is based on mirror reflections. One mirror changes and mutates the image of the other mirror. In other words, although certain principles are exact mirror images (left-right, dark-light, high-low), the two mirrors themselves are peculiarly individualistic.
There is a scene in Dryer's wondrous film "Vampyr" in which the shadow of one of the undead refuses to act in concert with its source, or primary image. It follows the action of the body, but in its own fashion, independently and in its own time. In Nocturnal No. 1, I was hoping to do something like that: the reflections are sometimes melodic and sometimes harmonic.
When Nocturnals Nos. 1 and 2 were being written, I was occupied with polishing my first two independent compositions ("Kaleidoscope" for piano and Sonata in one movement for unaccompanied cello, both composed in 1957). "Kaleidoscope" was a mother lode of ideas (primarily dodecaphonic) which I never was able to coalesce into a whole. My desire at that time was to write a work closer to Schumann's "Kreisleriana", but it stubbornly insisted on being a "Weberniana." Two of the "Kaleidoscope" miniatures refused to stay miniatures and developed into Nocturnals Nos. 1 and 2. "Kaleidoscope", as such, imploded: some sections disappeared, others slunk into other pieces. The final use of some of these parts occurred in 1988 (almost 31 years later), when they became the basis of Nocturnal No. 6, which in turn became the basis of the second movement of Piano Concerto No. 1 (1990). The circle was thus completed.
The form is that of two long arches, the first ending with the shattering of one of the mirrors. The second arch becomes a sort of a remnant over which various new tropes (brilliant and sudden bursts of feux d'artifice) are overlaid on a soft, hazy restatement of the theme. The piece ends with a short phrase that suggests, perhaps, a gust of wind.