The later 1960s were
a miserable time for me as a composer — increasingly disaffected
by the tone of the times, quite unable to affirm any position of
my own. Doubting, then despairing of anything individual
to say or any technique to say it with, the impulse flagged and
nearly guttered out altogether. I ground away at the First
Concerto's finale till 1969, producing a few little pieces
(some without opus numbers) on the side. Perhaps only the
smallest of all, Tender Only to One, the four settings of Stevie
Smith for unaccompanied
soprano, which in their very bareness touched and refreshed some
compositional basics in their simplest form, are worth keeping.