Penderecki had originally begun working on a secular oratorio, based on Racine's tragedies and Andrea Chénier, for this commission from the French Ministery of Culture and Radio France on the occasion of the bicentennial of the 1789 French Revolution. The central idea was to create a meditation "on the question of destiny and the dignity of the individual." The form of the work began to change toward a symphony based on an Adagio, eventually becoming a symphony in one movement (almost the same length as Penderecki's Symphony No. 2). The work was to win the 1992 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. The majestic minor key opening begins with long-held trumpet tones, eventually supported by sustained strings, beneath which a strident, serious theme unwinds. The theme is taken up by the woodwinds while the high strings maintain the drone tone. Suddenly, the tympani announce a new statement which is an angular, highly dissonant polyphonic version of the theme. The winds then introduce a grotesque, almost mocking variation of the theme. The mood becomes foreboding. A solo cello speaks out with a sad quality. But the threatening quality will not subside. A kind of angular march with stretched intervals develops polyphonically. There are slithering runs and forward-rushing chromatic runs under an ever-increasing mass of dissonant brass. Harsh stabs are exchanged between the orchestra and the tympani in alternation. An eerie flute solo against string harmonics suggests an emotionally desolate landscape or time. The theme returns in this setting. Again, tympani lead the texture and spirit back to a heavy declamation of the theme that quickly retreats into sombre and melancholy reflection. Slowly, the harmony modulates almost to a major key, but again retreats on second thought. Blaring brass stabs and string tremolos re-intensify the texture. A repeat of the slow modulation leads toward brighter timbres. A clarinet solo brings a moment of wandering and indecision. Small fragments from the theme are heard throughout the orchestra, together with hard, dry string pizzicati and a quickly stroked bell tree. An extended chromatic bassoon solo adds a human voice quality. The strings begin to respond with gentle bi-tonal harmonies that eventually consent to rest in G major. But the momentary peace is interrupted by a recapitulation of the theme in mocking and gradually more tortured tones. A kind of comical chicken-pecking theme suggests a fugal development, which is interrupted by blaring events from the orchestra. The theme attempts several times to establish itself. The orchestration becomes odder in timbral combinations and anxious tumbling-together imitative passages that become violent. There are shrieking waves of winds and strings that lead back to a restatement of the theme in a terrifying chromatic version. After this emotionallly wrenching journey, the music begins to calm itself, the theme imitated in various instruments and fading to a fatal vision with tubular bells and deep basses and funereal tympani.

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