Like most river gods, Alpheus was a son of the Titans Oceanus and his sister-wife, Tethys.

Alpheus was a passionate hunter and fell in love with the nymph Arethusa, but she fled from him to the island of Ortygia near Syracuse, and metamorphosed herself into a well, after which Alpheus became a river, which flowing from the Peloponnese under the sea to Ortygia, there united its waters with those of the well Arethusa.

This piece attempts to evoke the feeling resting by a river, shimmering in the rays of the sun, by use of the distinctively dreamy ancient Greek Hypolydian Mode - the equivalent intervals as F-F on the white notes of the piano, but heard here, in the intense focus of just intonation.