Symphony No.2

At risk of sounding like a broken record, I should again immediately acknowledge this work will be criticized as much too aufgeknöpft, easy-going, laid-back, simple-minded, unserious, and so on - even though it extends to nearly an hour in length. Perhaps paradoxically, there will be others certain to complain that the harmonies are far too abstruse and sour to be abided by anyone sane; but, then, there you have it, in a nutshell. My symphonies would appear to be all, thus far, nothing but introductions to the worst of all possible worlds. Mea maxima culpa.

And lest some fanatic with a stopwatch triumphantly observe that the durations and tempos of the several movements here are suspiciously similar to the scheme of Bruckner's Ninth - the Unfinished - I will confess the fact was both consciously and unconsciously so. I did intend to roughly emulate that work's number of movements and tempos; but didn't actually plan their performance lengths to fall so closely within the limits generally chosen by directors of the Bruckner piece. That ... just sort of ... happened.