His earlier works (Serenade for Strings) are lighter and Grieg-like. Bereavement after bereavement injected a new element which is at its most blazingly acrid in the Asrael Symphony. Asrael (the angel of death) is the first of the triptych of works that occupied him, on and off, from 1905 until circa 1930. The other two works are Ripening (Zrání) (1912-17) and Epilogue (1920-29).