Three Black Kings for Soloist and Orchestra (1974)

The music that leaped out at listeners was Gould's Spirituals in Five Movements and Ellington's Three Black Kings. Smart, concise, alternately soothing and shattering, always sincere: Gould's orchestral writing represents everything good and important in the American urban sensibility by hint of exceptional craftsmanship. Popular music is transformed. Ellington's piece reorganizes symphony orchestra sound. Strings are busy but largely subservient to winds and percussion. One was fascinated by the elegance of this music, the fastidious attention to every sonority, the love of delicacy even in emphatic moments.