Symphony No. 2 (Hovhaness)

In a 1981 conversation with Charles Amirkhanian, Hovhaness detailed the rather haphazard way Mysterious Mountain acquired its opus number, recalling:

[Stokowski] called me up many times and talked to me about various things he wanted me to write and he said, 'Does it have an opus number? People like opus numbers. You know how dumb they are.' So I said, 'No, it doesn't have an opus number. I haven't catalogued my work.' 'Well how would 132'—or something like that, I think—'how would that be, do you think that gives you enough room for the things you've written?' And I said, 'Sure, that’s okay. I’ll start making a catalogue.' And he said, 'I like your titles, give it a title.' And so I gave it the title, Mysterious Mountain. Which I felt was mysterious enough.[5]

Contemporary critical reception to Mysterious Mountain was positive and it remains one of Hovhaness's most popular works.[1][6] In 1995, Lawrence Johnson of the Chicago Tribune said the symphony "still amazes today" and that it "anticipated by nearly 40 years the spiritual, meditative quasi-minimalism of composers such as Pärt, Tavener and Górecki."[3] Edward Greenfield of Gramophone noted similarities in the piece to the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams and favorably commented, "'Mountains are symbols, like pyramids, of man's attempt to know God', says the composer, and his spiritual purpose is expressed in the modal writing of the Andante outer movements, with overtones of Vaughan Williams pastoral as well as of Tallis, framing a central fugue characteristically smooth in its lines. The finale, at the start sounding like 'Tallis Fantasia meets Parsifal', culminates in a chorale leading to a grandiose conclusion."[6]

Not all early reports were uncritically enthusiastic, however. Harold C. Schonberg, reviewing a Carnegie Hall performance by Leopold Stokowski (on which Hovhaness's symphony shared the bill with the U.S. premiere of Vaughan Williams's Ninth Symphony, as well as works by Riegger and Orrego-Salas), pronounced Mysterious Mountain "well-made and full of delicate sounds", but found it "a not too convincing fusion of his Byzantine with Western elements".[7]

Despite the popular success of the symphony, Hovhaness expressed having "mixed feelings" about certain sections of the piece after its completion.[8] In a 1987 interview, he was quoted saying:

I remember hearing celestial ballet in my head as I lay down to rest from writing the work. Later I transcribed what I heard in my sleep. After I wrote it, then heard it again in my sleep, certain versions were wrong. So I corrected it. Now I cannot bear to hear it [...] it's just certain parts move me. I go out of the hall whenever the piece is performed.[9]