Composer’s Note:

Symphony No. 3, initially titled “Celebration,” was composed in 2001 to honor the 75th anniversaryof the founding of the University of Vermont’s music department. The entire score was revised and reorchestrated by the composer in 2024.

The music incorporates a poem by John Taggart: Slow Song for Mark Rothko. In a retrospective of John Taggarts poetry Peter Oleary wrote that consideration of his work must necessarily involve the recognition that repetition is what rings the changes in the poems and what signals those changes themselves that the poems enable.

Repetition can be a symptom of anxiety, a reflection of compulsion, but can also encourage resolute transformation. Formatively, my symphony incorporates the simultaneous repetition of different quantities, introducing plasticity and allowing organic extension of basic sonic material. The sectioned design, in one uninterrupted movement approximates the tripartite structure of the poem.