A native of Birmingham, Alabama, composer John Vincent was highly regarded in his lifetime, particularly as an educator. He served as the head of the music department at Western Kentucky State University for eight years before succeeding Arnold Schoenberg as a professor of composition at UCLA from 1946 to 1969. In addition to teaching and composing, Vincent conducted and published The Diatonic Modes in Modern Music (1957), a seminal tome in twentieth-century music theory. Though his compositional output is relatively small, it is comprehensive; he produced a ballet, an opera, one film score, ten orchestral works, some vocal music, and several chamber and solo instrumental pieces. 

Vincent only left one symphony: his Symphony in D, which he subtitled “A Festival Piece in One Movement.” The Louisville Orchestra commissioned the work in 1954 and premiered it the following year under the baton of Robert Whitney. In 1957, conductor Eugene Ormandy, a noted advocate of American contemporary music, asked Vincent to expand the finale before recording the work with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Despite its initial popularity, seeing over 50 performances in the first few years after its composition, the work has been largely neglected in recent decades. 

Vincent’s Symphony in D is cast as one continuous movement, but it is broadly in two sections, marked Andante moderato and Allegro. Countering the fashion for composers to describe their music in dry, theoretical terms, Vincent focuses on the emotional impetus behind the work in the liner notes of the original recording: 

“Although it is in no sense programmatic, my Symphony has a special significance to me. It was written during a very happy time, and in it I sang a song of deep personal joy. It reflects the warmth and love of great, good friends and expresses my thankfulness for a rich and full life.” 

Out of the contemplative slow introduction, which Vincent says expresses “the course of growth of the consciousness of joy,” unfolds a broad, ecstatic melody in the cellos and horns. After a lyrical episode, the pace ratchets up toward an exuberant allegro theme played by the full orchestra, ushering in a celebratory mood that prevails until the symphony’s triumphant conclusion.

-Katherine Buzard