The best analogy for the structure of the 22-minute piece is the so-called "concept album," a continuous set of songs based on one themecmoonlight in music. The title of the work is taken from the Wallace Stevens poem The Comedian as the Letter C where, on approaching Carolina, the comedian reflects, "The book of moonlight is not written yet nor half begun." This work is a set of nocturnes that refer to other music, both popular and classical, that center around the theme of moonlight.

The melody for "Carolina Moon" was written when the composer was fifteen years old; only at its end is the familiar song quoted. John Lennon's opening declamation of "Mr. Moonlight" is here reinterpreted by the violin introduction. The words for the title "O holy Moon" are taken from a refrain in Roger Sessions's Idyll of Theocritus.

"Mondschein" is the nickname for Beethoven's Sonata, here used as an accompaniment to the composer's own melody found in his narrator, cello, and piano work The Black Cat.

"Harvest Moon" contains some hoe-down fiddle music. "Luna di Miele" is Italian for honeymoon. "Carolina Moon Revisited" reprises the original folk melody. Each of the "songs without words" is connected by episodes of ambiguous tonality. There are times, such as at the beginning, when the instruments are playing in separate time frames and their bar lines do not match up.

This work, largely composed at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in the summer of 1987 and completed in March 1988, was written for Peter Ciaschini, concertmaster of the Dayton Philharmonic. Vahn Armstrong gave the Boston premiere, and Ayano Ninomiya and the composer played it at Bell's fiftieth birthday retrospective in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, January 17, 2002.

"In Memory of Roger Sessions" for solo violin was written a year after Sessions's death, during Christmas in 1986a87 in Boston, Wilson, North Carolina, and St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles. It was premiered by Ayano Ninomiya in April 1998.

The work consists of three short movements: "Elegy," "Parody," and "Dialogue." "Elegy," based on a theme from Sessions's most ambitious work, the opera Montezuma, is a slow rhapsodic movement with implied counterpoint. "Parody" refers to the mocking character of the second movement as well as to its Renaissance definition, that is a form of homage paid by quoting the music of another composer. Nine of Sessions's workscthe Black Maskers for orchestra, Symphony No. 1, Second Sonata for piano, Duo for violin and piano, Symphony No. 2, Concerto for violin and orchestra, Sonata for Piano No. 1, Symphony No. 7, and the Sonata for solo violincall identified in the score, are quoted in a seamless set of sarcastic variations. "Dialogue" is an imagined conversation between myself and Sessions much like our actual conversations. Our names are spelled as musical themes--L(A)rry (B)(E)ll and Rog(E)r (S=Eb) (E) (S) (S)ion(S)--that are presented antiphonally and simultaneously. The repeated Ebs show Sessions, as in reality always, having the last word.

"Four Pieces in Familiar Style" was written for the New England Conservatory Preparatory School's String Duo Project and first performed by Jennifer Press and Julie Thompson at the annual Contemporary Music Festival in January 1995. The four pieces are characterized by dance rhythms and their sonority is derived from the frequent use of open strings. The movement titles are: Sonata in Two Parts, Which Side are you on?, The Cat and the Moon, and Four-Voice Fugue. Ayano Ninomiya performed a tour de force by recordingcwith herselfcboth parts of the duo.

"Just as I am" was written in May 2002 and dedicated to Ayano Ninomiya, whose enthusiasm for our joint recording project and her lyrical, singing violin playing inspired me. It is based on the old Southern hymn "Just as I am, without one plea." The two-movement sonata bears a superficial resemblance to Beethoven's two-movement Sonata for Piano, op. 90. In my piece the first movement centers around G major and the second movement around E major. A fragment of the hymn is quoted Lontano, at a great distance, in a very high register both at the beginning and end of the entire piece.

Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony is based on a 1982 essay of the same title by Lewis Thomas. The music, written in Boston in 1991, was commissioned by and is dedicated to violinist Joanna Jenner, who requested an unusual composition in which the violinist would also speak as a narrator. The work can also be performed with a separate narrator (as it is here). Jenner and I premiered it in August 1992 at the Bennington College Chamber Music Conference and Composers' Forum of the East and performed it subsequently in Boston and New York.

The Lewis Thomas first-person text I selected deals with the long and fearful shadow cast by the threat of nuclear annihilation, a prospect of death of not only the earth and all of mankind, but also a "second death" of all that has ever been known and experienced. The essay makes frequent reference to music and I have incorporated several quotations, for example Brahms's Third Symphony, Beethoven's Grosse Fuge and the beginning of the Op. 131 quartet, the first (and last) movement of Mahler's Ninth Symphony, and my own "The Idea of Order at Key West." The work is based on the opening measures of the last movement of Mahler's Ninth Symphony: These measures act as the basis for continuous variations whose effect is unrelieved conflict.

Sleep Song, a lullaby for violin and piano, was written in Boston in 1984 for the children of friends of Verio Piroddi. It is dedicated to Piroddi and was given its premiere in March 1986 by violinist Peter Ciaschini and pianist Michael Dewart. It was arranged for viola for Bob Williams in May 2002. Both parts are designed to be played by children. In a popular song form it is meant to be repeated until the performers are lulled to sleep.