This work was written for the 10 year jubilee of the NOTA Choir from Aarhus in 1978 and is dedicated to the choir and its conductor, Mogens Helmer Petersen. As the name implies, the mood of the three poems by Sylvia Plath is sombre and dark; a fact obviously reflected in the music. The first madrigal is characterized by a subdued and meditative expression, in the second we hear an almost Schubert-like siren song, and finally the third madrigal is a minor-tinted movement with traces of Bach.