
Autumn
in Star Valley Wyoming
Symphony #5


Prophetic, seductive, autumnal drum,
Tarutta, Tarutta, Taruttatum.
Portentous, foreboding, prognostic they come,
Tarutta, Tarutta, Taruttatum!
Symphony No. 5 is available in the 4-CD set you can order below.
Three Symphonies and a Concerto, Physical CD (4 CD Set). Includes Symphonies No. 1, 3 and 5, and the Hometown Concerto.
Three Symphonies and a Concerto is also available wherever digital downloads are sold.

Digital Download
Digital Download
Physical CD

This symphony had its beginning in 1999, 10 years after the Third Symphony. There is in it a sense of seriousness not present in my previous music. When I wrote the symphony I had turned 60 and realized I was well past the halfway mark. I was entering, if not already in, the autumn of my life, and this symphony, although I didn’t consciously note it at the time, marked my entry into this new phase. Was the gravity of what I was writing a harbinger of the coming end, or merely a reminder that living life is serious business? The dormancy of winter follows the foreboding of fall. The two are of course inseparable.
The subtitles of both the third and fifth symphonies are afterthoughts, tacked on years later. I believe they are both fitting, but I did not when I sat down to write them have something predetermined in my mind. What “made” me write what I did is not now and was not then consciously apparent.