The First, subtitled Elegy, was written in 1965 and is in three movements with a central scherzo and concluding slow movement. Its roots lie in the English symphonic tradition, especially that of Vaughan Williams, a particular favourite of McCabe's. Cast in a single, continuous span, the work is constituted of five clearly defined sections and bears a more cosmopolitan outlook. The Third Symphony, Hommages, was completed in 1978 and starts out quite deliberately with music of an impressionistic stamp lying somewhere between Ravel and early Messiaen. Mesto concludes the work, however, in a questioning A flat.
Time is the other key element of the work's construction.
The composer achieves this by keeping attention focused on the foreground activity where groups of interrelated tempi combine in the upper parts, so that the underlying pulse can quietly step up or down a gear in the bass. At times these 'top' and 'bottom' speeds appear to run together, at others they seem to run counter to each other. Trains, incidentally, 'are a recurrent leitmotif' in Thomas Wolfe's novel Of Time and the River, which McCabe started reading at an advanced stage of the symphony's production. While there is no direct connection between novel and symphony, the shared temporal concerns suggested to the composer the use of Wolfe's title. These forces then took the work on tour.