A very unusual work for a wind orchestra, a continuous and dramatic soundpiece unlike the melodious works that many people expect from Hovhaness. "Wild fierceness of volcanic earthquake and avalanche-shaken mountains, rough stones, caves, rocks sculptured by tornadoes inspired this symphony of rough-hewn sounds" (Hovhaness). The beginning of the first movement introduces "rough" tone clusters, and high "dragon fly" clusters leading into simple double counterpoint on pattern-like melodies with a very ancient feeling. The brass take over the melodies antiphonically accompanied by clusters. The music increases in nobility and the intensity of its dissonances. (Hovhaness notes that "in ancient music, sounds of a brief duration touched and released against longer sustained sounds were called "dragon flies" as the dragon fly skims on the surface of the water). The second movement begins with complex orchestra bell patterns against drum punctuations; soon the other instruments join in depicting "lightning and thunder ... dark rumblings grow into a cataclysm of sounds". Crashing drum sounds in complex meters start off the third movement above which six trumpets in unison, and massed dissonance at the end of phrases, sound "a fierce ... cry of mighty peaks". Hovhaness notes that "the poet Isahagian writes of the peak of Mt. Ararat: Infinite lightnings have touched the sword of the diamond."

© "Blue" Gene Tyranny, All Music Guide