Sinfonia Concertante

A work curiously describable as simultaneously a rollicking success and an abject failure. A success, insofar as my stated goal from the very beginning has been to introduce tone rows into classical forms using the most conventional possible means; and the writing throughout this piece, apart from the occasionally sour and difficult harmonic basis underlying it, has got to be the most consistently conventional orchestral environment I've ever produced. So, success.

Also, absolutely unmitigated failure. Because, when I started sketching the piece, it was supposed to be a (first) symphony, op.28. But, two days (i.e., 80 seconds) into the draft, I threw up my hands in utter disgust and accepted the hard fact that it was going to be just another concerto, not a symphony. 60 years old, involved with music almost my entire life, and I still have not even the first idea how to produce genuinely symphonic writing. Yet.

Perhaps if I print out a full score of Bruckner's Ninth, toss it into a salad, and eat it for dinner tonight, the secret will come to me. It's worth trying.