An interesting piece here by Gavin Bryars about the orchestration of Percy Grainger
"...  Such a scheme sounds, from this outline, simplistic to a fault, yet Grainger, by following the progressive narrative, injects into each of these cadences an increasing anguish so that they are never the same, a device which bears comparison with, say, Schubert's equivalent technique in Der Erlkönig. The tension increases verse by verse, reaching its height in the fifth verse ("For your return my heart is burning") and then, with consummate skill, Grainger allows a spatial calm to return to the last verse which, for the text at least, is the same as the first, adding a richly chromatic coda of a mere 6 bars." ...lots more > http://www.gavinbryars.com/work/writing/articles/percy-grainger-shallow-brown