Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Grammatte was a Russian-Canadian composer who started playing piano at a very young age. She had quite an unusual childhood—she was born in Russia, placed with foster parents right away. By the time she was 9, she had been sent to Paris to study at the Paris Conservatory. At the beginning of her career, she was a successful performer, but stepped away from the stage in 1930 to focus on composition. Eckhardt-Grammatte has several different compositional periods; during the 1930s and 40s she leaned toward neoclassicism, and by the 1950s she was experimenting with serialism. Her music has been described as "dark, intense, and dramatic, with a kind of unstoppable energy—drawing inspiration from both classical counterpoint and the edgier, more dissonant sounds of post-Romantic music." 

 

Nocturne was written in her early period, and is part of the larger collection "From My Childhood". The piece is tonal and written in the Romantic style with a ternary (A-B-A) structure. The melody is clear and simple, while the harmony is notated as grace notes throughout both A sections. The B section begins with a light and carefree character that slowly builds energy through forward-moving triplets. It eventually culminates in a downward moving gesture before returning to the more tranquil A section.

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