Crumb recalls that he started Night Music I as a purely instrumental composition, but that it only came into focus when he decided to include two verses by the modern Spanish poet, Federico García Lorca. The composer writes: "The work as a whole is a projection of the violently contrasting moods of the two poems: La Luna Asoma (The Moon Rises), with its aura of almost ecstatic lyricism, and the intense, sardonic Gacela de la Terrible Presencia (Gacela of the Terrible Presence). The conflict of mood remains unresolved at the conclusion of the work. Structurally speaking, the seven movements (Notturni) of the composition form a readily perceptible arch design in which the Lorca poems stand as buttress points. Sections of quasi-improvisatory music are integrated into a context of precisely notated music. I have endeavored to enhance Lorca's surrealistic images by means of a highly colored chromaticism and unusual juxtapositions of timbre, register and rhythmic forms."