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.