Dawn Songs consists of three essays on music. A short one on Derek Bailey as heard in 1970; a moderate-size one on surviving west gallery choral pieces performed in pubs of the Sheffield Moorlands area at Christmas, called 'Mass Lyric'; and 'Dawn Songs' itself, which concerns a lamentational genre of Transylvanian village music and forms the bulk of the book. So if ever there was a book discussing musical practices which very few people outside the area know about or want to, this is it.