The National Symphony Orchestra commissioned Glass to write it to commemorate the 60th birthday of conductor Leonard Slatkin.
Slatkin conducted the debut concert on January 20, 2005 at the Kennedy Center, which Glass attended.
The symphony is scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 B♭ clarinets, E♭ clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, rattle, tom-tom, wood block, glockenspiel, piano, celesta, harp, violins, violas, cellos, basses, organ, and chorus.
At 30 minutes long, it has three movements: Glass said that he wrote the symphony about Mesoamerica and the life of Native Americans centuries before the arrival of European explorers.
Glass has integrated three transcendental concepts of ancestral culture (Huichol) : The first is the " corn " which means, desire to return to the innocence before adulthood (the connection with Mother Earth); the second, the hikuri is the sacred vision of corn and Blue Deer, and this represents the third symbolism, from this world to the hereafter can do it, because when get the blue deer, stop being ordinary, and the man will be transformed.