When I started my Symphony in 1973, I had no idea that that was what it would grow into. The Philharmonia Orchestra had commissioned an orchestral work for 1974, and I wrote a moderately long single movement, provisionally called Black Pentecost. The title was taken from the end of a George Mackay Brown poem (which I had set for soprano and guitar, a short time before) concerning the ruined and deserted crofts in an Orkney valley—

The poor and the good fires are all quenched.

Now, cold angel, keep the valley

From the bedlam and cinders of a Black Pentecost.