[2] The work consists of two parts: Tippett's conception of the Third Symphony occurred during a concert in Edinburgh in 1965 during a performance of either Pierre Boulez's Piano Sonata No.
Describing its creative cycle, Tippett remarked: "The work took seven years of intermittent consideration and eventual creation.
From such tiny noting of a future possibility I had to put down a kind of mnemonic shorthand, so that I could remember what I thought the structure of the whole work might be when I’d only experienced the initial moment of conception.
...the original spontaneous conception of “immobile” polarized against “speedy” (so ridiculously simple, but clearly having the power to initiate the creative process now apparently ready to being) was always the structuring factor.
[8] Mahler's settings of Chinese poems in Das Lied von der Erde served as a precedent for Tippett of a work which articulated song text in the shape of a symphony: "I began thus to plan and organize lyrics that would have a shape - of a human being moving from innocence to experience".
[10] In the dramatic fourth song, therefore, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is quoted three times at climactic points and its message is challenged in the text and music of the work.