Much of the music of Gavin Bryars exhibits the paradoxical trait of dating itself precisely by its anachronistic quality. Composed on commission from the Hilliard Ensemble, a group famous for its performances of Medieval and Renaissance polyphony, the work takes as its text an excerpt from the Oration on the Dignity of Man by fifteenth century philosopher Pico della Mirandola. Bryars sets the work using a variety of harmonies and textures that sometimes hint at the sounds of Pico's Florence (an association we make, perhaps, because of the distinctive vocal quality of early music singers rather than the sonorities themselves). On the other hand, Bryars' disjunct, episodic approach to expression and his occasional extremes of chromaticism and melodic gesture shatter the ambiguous illusion of archaism and position the work squarely within the postmodern.

Perhaps most anachronistically of all, the piece takes its title from the Mississippi town depicted in Tennessee Williams' play Summer and Smoke, a production for which Bryars had scored incidental music the year previous. In the scene the protagonist, Alma, engages in a fervent debate regarding the sanctity of human agency and the potential granted to each individual to shape one's own destiny. Having been enthralled by this scene each night of the play's run, Bryars recalled it when he encountered Pico's poignant text. In the passage used by Bryars as the text for Glorious Hill, Pico depicts (in Latin prose) God speaking to Adam before the latter had eaten the forbidden fruit and been expelled from the Garden of Eden. "You shall possess, according to your desire and judgment," says the Lord, "whatever place, whatever form, and whatever functions you desire." He continues explaining to Adam that, while the animals of the earth have their places and roles prescribed, humans are free to determine their own courses and "fashion [themselves] in whatever form [they] shall prefer." In setting the text, Bryars emphasizes lucid declamation and deliberate shifts in harmony and mood with each idea or image. His chordal trajectories, though perhaps tame when considered in isolated moments, twist and turn with modern-sounding emotional nuance when strung together. Likewise, Bryars indulges in several instances of cleverly conceived and artfully executed pictorialisms. When the Lord describes Adam's freedom to "descend among the lower forms of being, like the brute beasts," the upper voices undertake a spiraling melodic descent. Immediately thereafter, when Adam is granted equal opportunity to ascend by force of will and effort to the status of "the higher beings, which are divine," the melody emerges from the lowest range of the bass and slides upwards from voice to voice until it shimmers at the top of the highest range. Similarly, at the final repeat of the phrase "You are not heavenly, nor earthly, mortal nor immortal," the melody is taken up in parallel motion by the terrestrial bass and the celestial soprano, singing in tandem despite the symbolic octaves of separation between them.

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