Barbara Heller composed Inner Dialogue with a musical material consisting of several interval series arranged in a dialogue-like manner. The composer focuses on ascending and descending movements. Barbara Heller writes:

I was particularly emotionally connected to one series of intervals, which can be found at the beginning of the second part (Lento)and the fifth part (Calmo): major sixth, minor second, fourth, major second, and tritone. This falling sixth triggered in me the attempt, after the semitone downward step, to climb back up with a rising fourth, and then back down again with the whole tone and the tritone this resulted in an express ion that wouldn’t let me go and touched me deeply. It was like a trap from which I couldn’t escape. And so, as I worked on the cello piece, it became an inner dialogue: with the back and forth downwards and then upwards again, a kind of variation-like music that repeatedly with small changes was a self-questioning, an attempt to free myself from this ‘motif,’ which I failed to do.

In this edition, the editor Beverley Ellis provides important suggestions for interpretation.