Symphony No. 5 is my longest composition to date, with its five movements coming in just a few minutes short of an hour. The first movement of this piece is the longest and is also the longest singular movement of any multi-movement work I have conceived, coming in at just shy of 20 minutes. It was written from late October to December of 2024 - largely during my time abroad in Europe. In this Symphony, I sought to create a work that both fused the active influence of the moment - the great European tradition of massive symphonies like those of Bruckner, Mahler, etc. - but also one that very much still captured my own artistic style and upbringing, which are distinctly American in origin.
Symphony No. 5 is a deeply personal piece to me. The main theme of the entire work, clearly tonal to C, is presented immediately in the violas and cellos and continuously elaborated on in varying layers of abstraction until the return to C is accomplished in the somewhat enigmatic fifth movement. I do not characterize this symphony as one of the tragedy to triumph symphonies like Beethoven's fifth or Shostakovich's eighth, as the end of this work is far from triumphant, but the influence of such previous symphonies is very obviously heard in my composition.