Joseph Sowa:

>I'm writing on a symphony right now and was wondering what options in
>terms of layout and form do I have when writing it? In short, if any of
>you were to write one, how would you write your first symphony.

I would write something extremely elevated and extremely serious (or as
serious and elevated as I am capable of) for my first symphony.  After all,
there's a good chance it would be my only symphony, and because most people
equate "elevated and serious" with "profound," I would appeal to the snob
in many programmers.  I would also write it for modest-size forces, so it
wouldn't be expensive for an orchestra to play, since I would want lots of
performances.  The form would be dramatic (in the sense of a conflict among
opposed ideas) but not necessarily classical, although there would be four
movements (I'm not all that big on one-movement symphonies, in general).

Steve Schwartz