Symphonic Sketches

The piece consists of four movements: The composer's intentions are specified by bits of poetry opposite each title page.

For when pale flutes and oboes play, To sadness I become a prey; Give me the violets and the May, But no gray skies for me.

4, "A Vagrom Ballad", A tale of tramps and railway ties, Or old clay pipes and rum, Of broken heads and blacken eyes And the "thirty days" to come!

The English horn solo portrays a similar atmosphere as in the second movement of Dvořák’s 9th Symphony (1893), where they both have a pentatonic scale in D-flat.

It is described as "A jaunty irreverence, a snapping of the fingers at Fate and the Universe, that we do not recognize in music of foreign composers..." It contains a distinctive bass clarinet solo and a somewhat haphazard organization with unexpected periods of silence, tempo changes, and slapstick cliffhangers.