I completed the first draft of my fifth symphony sometime in 1968 in Pittsburg, Kansas. Martin Luther Ling, Jr. was assassinated in April of that year and his passing no doubt made a great impression on me and this work, though that impression was intuitive rather than programmatic. As with all fifth symphonies, composers tend to pay special heed given it's importance in music history (Beethoven, Shostakovich, Mahler, Sibelius, and so on). The final version of the work heard here received its final revision in 2007, some thirty-nine years after its original draft, and now stands complete. As with all my symphonies, Symphony No. 5 has five movements in a vaguely palindrome form.