Composition

Two Loves is a musical setting of Lord Alfred Douglas's 1894 poem of the same name. The poem explores the nature and possibility of love through the dream of an unnamed protagonist, who encounters two boys approaching him in a paradisal garden, both claiming to be Love. What begins as a serene vision soon unfolds into an intense emotional confrontation, ultimately giving way to quiet resignation in the face of the painful helplessness of being different within a deeply prejudiced reality.

The three figures are portrayed musically through distinct harmonic dialects; yet, as extensions of an inner struggle articulated from a first-person perspective, they are unified by shared motivic ideas introduced at the opening of the work and developed throughout its course. In the end, a verdict is delivered — announced by three heavy blows struck on the piano and bass drum.

Is Love confined to only one form of expression? The original poem became one of the key pieces of evidence used to convict the poet's lover, Oscar Wilde, of gross indecency. More than a century later, at the time this composition was written, homosexuality has been legalised in many Western countries, while remaining illegal in some and a social taboo in others. The composer honours those who fought for life's simplest rights but were betrayed by a brutal reality, especially by intolerance.