Among twentieth-century composers Britten and Hindemith are those who have made perhaps the most notable use of the passacaglia—one of the few points of affinity between them. To Hindemith, predominantly a composer of instrumental music of sonata or symphonic proportions, the passacaglia is a confirming movement. It confirms a tonal centre, recalls earlier thematic material, and in general gives a sense of finality through its systematic progress and growth. Britten too has used the passacaglia as a confirming finale, but he also employs it to create a point of stability around which other movements can gravitate. More important, he has found its tension-building qualities a good means for expressing and intensifying certain moods in his operas and vocal works, where the passacaglia's persistent ground becomes a kind of animated pedal-point that supports the unfolding of the dramatic situation. The contrapuntal polarity between the ground and the expressive flow of the vocal line is one that is carefully controlled to convey the text's innermost expression. He often elevates the passacaglia to some crucial dramatic high point of an opera or song-cycle to reflect on a tragedy or intensify a dialogue. Several examples immediately come to mind associated with the subject of death. The well-known passacaglia in Peter Grimes, an instrumental interlude between scenes, depicts the derangement of Grimes and is, as it were, oppressed with the sense of his impending death. In The Rape of Lucretia there is a dramatic passacaglia after Lucretia's suicide, in which the other characters express their feelings on the finality of death.