One of the persistent features of Peter Maxwell Davies's music has been the use of musical material borrowed from medieval and renaissance sources. His interest in the music of this period has not of course been in its abstract musical forms, which represent aesthetic ideals now unattainable, but in themes of faith and belief which it can be used to symbolise for us. Like Adrian Leverkiihn, the composer-hero of Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus, Davies is concerned with the dilemma that in a godless world, to create God after one's own image is to call up the devil.