This is a work that makes a powerful symphonic impression. It is one of a series of works that fed the rapidly growing reputation of composer Dominick Argento (born in 1927 in York, PA). Following its premiere with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and the Minnesota Orchestra on October 5, 1972, it was quickly taken up by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. Moreover, choreographers used it as the basis for a ballet, which she took on tour in the Netherlands in 1972. This was the first of at least seven works commissioned from Argento by the Minnesota Orchestra. It is occasional music at its best, being written for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the orchestra (originally known as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra). Its scoring includes quadruple woodwinds and a large group of percussion instruments, especially bells, played by three percussionists. The work, with its emphasis on the use of bells, originates in Argento's realization that an anniversary occasion is automatically a comment on the passage of a span of time. Therefore, he made his work about the passage of time, hence the prominence given to bells. The emphasis on bells is also a tribute to the city of Florence, Italy, where Argento had lived on Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, and to which he has frequently returned as a place of artistic stimulus. (In fact, he wrote this work entirely in that city.) Florence is a city of bells and Argento's quarters were near the city's famous clock tower and the belfry of the Palazzo Vecchio. There, he noticed in his official remarks for this work "...the hourly ringing of church bells is inescapable." A chart in the score directs the placement of the percussionists and their bells at the center rear and both sides of the stage, roughly in the clock positions of 9, 12, and 4 from the audience's point of view. The fact that the anniversary celebrated by this work was a 70th contributed an additional resonance, for this is the Biblical span of a person's life, three score and ten years. So the work's four movements at once mark the seasons of the year, the ages of man, and a metaphorical day. This interest in time and recurrence of events finds in mark in the work's microstructure as well: It almost constantly uses musical textures or forms that are based on cycles, recurrence, or imitation (fugues, chaconnes, canons, rondeaux, etc.) Each of the four movements is named after a season of the year ("Spring," "Summer," "Fall," and "Winter") and comprises two sections: A prelude ("Dawn," "Noon," "Twilight," and "Midnight") and a "pageant": jolly holiday parade, warm wedding procession, a grotesque scherzo of a war march, and finally a funeral procession. These symbolize youth, love, struggle, and death. Only the final movement has a postlude. This brief epilogue to the whole symphonic structure, lacking the time-telling bells, according to the composer suggests that there is a "...possibility of time transcended, a reverberation that lingers after time's final toll."

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