The piece is dedicated "in friendship and gratitude" to James Levine, who would have conducted the premiere had he not retired from his post as the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra due to health concerns.
In an interview with the Boston Classical Review, Harbison remarked, "The character of it seemed to be... out of harmony with the sense of Mr. Levine's current situation where he's had to give up so much of what he wanted to do.
Harbison wrote in the score program notes, "The concluding lines of the poem are rendered in terms which define much of the rest of the piece.
"[4] Matthew Guerrieri of NewMusicBox further remarked:Harbison is, on the one hand, a composer of symphonies with a technique to match: the bend-but-don't-break tonality, the chain-of-custody working out of ideas, the cultivation of a monumental austerity in his orchestration.
Maybe it was a reflection of the overwhelming sense of unfinished business surrounding Levine's tenure and departure, or maybe of something in the composer's own temperament, but Harbison's Sixth was hard to put a finger on in a most interesting way.