This symphony, which is about 30 minutes long, is in one continuous movement although, broadly speaking, it is in two sections – the first one is mostly fast (after a slow introduction), and the second one slow. As with many of my longer pieces the music starts with three differing and unconnected statements, and the symphonic elaboration consists of their interaction. There is no ‘development’, in a traditional manner; instead, the music explores the relationship between the different materials.

The opening bars consist of a statement that is not heard again until much later in the piece; this is followed by a short five bar theme that looks back to a late romantic style; and finally, there is a quotation of a few bars from the first piece in Couperin’s Les Nations. The rest of the music emerges from these three fragments, and each one has its own individual purpose.

The first statement, in a subconscious way, supplies much of the mood of the music, and it eventually re-appears in its original form to draw the symphony towards its conclusion. The romantic-style theme is heard again, almost unchanged, another nine times in the music – acting both as a structural marker but also as a sign of something that is undeveloped and repressed. The Couperin material also turns up many times in the piece but each time it moves slightly further forward through the original music.

At the conclusion of the symphony the opening material arrives at a repetitive cycle of chords that can take it no further; this is followed by a sudden breaking out of the second idea into a fully fledged theme, which is then suddenly cut off, to be followed by a complete statement of the Couperin on the woodwind, which ends the piece. The overall effect is deliberately enigmatic.