" I plead guilty here to writing ‘program music.’ I am passionately concerned with, even frightened by, the American psyche and I deeply believe that, as we enter what may be the most perilous passage in our history, we need to understand ourselves better – otherwise certain disaster will follow."

I wasn't imposing my interpretation on William Bolcom's Piano Quartet I was honoring what he said about it at the time the original recording I posted was issued:

Both my major commissions for the 1976 bicentennial observance took for their themes what I think of as a tragic flaw in the American psyche that seems to lead inexorably towards violence. While the Piano Concerto’s last movement was a cavalcade of brutal clichés and naïveté in constant juxtaposition, the impulse that leads the Piano Quartet to a (to me) terrifying conclusion is internal and psychological, having as much to do with the inner forces of the previous movements as with the overriding contrary principle. I plead guilty here to writing ‘program music.’ I am passionately concerned with, even frightened by, the American psyche and I deeply believe that, as we enter what may be the most perilous passage in our history, we need to understand ourselves better – otherwise certain disaster will follow. The contrary principle in the quartet derives as much from my own emotional fix on our nation's spiritual state as from Blakean philosophy.

“I find that this piece has grown with time even in my understanding of it, and now I can indicate more clearly to performers what I meant. The present recording reflects my intentions as well as any performance can and I endorse it heartily.”

Apart from the Quartet and William Bolcom's wonderful First Piano Concerto, I can think of exactly two other such compositions as significantly controversial related to national birthdays, one was Roy Harris's Bicentennial Symphony and the other is the Canadian Opera Riel by Harry Somers to a libretto written by Mavor Moore and Jacques Languirand commissioned by the CBC for the Canadian centennial.

I think this piece and the Concerto are only two of the certain signs of Bolcom's greatness as a composer and as a thinker.  I think he is, after or along with Charles Ives among our greatest composers.