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.

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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.