The first references to Symphony No. 5 come from August 1970, when Mycielski asked Andrzej Panufnik for help in obtaining a special kind of music manuscript paper (letter of 28 August 1970, Zygmunt Mycielski – Andrzej Panufnik. Korespondencja, part 2: Lata 1970–1987, ed., introduction and comments Beata Bolesławska-Lewandowska, Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences 2018, p. 5). More information about the creative process (completed in September 1977) can be found in the two men’s correspondence from 1974 (letter of 17 July 1974, ibidem, p. 68). 

This is how Mycielski wrote about his work in the programme booklet of the 1978 Poznań Music Spring: “cyclical reminiscences of rhythms and selected notes, similar to old themes and old modulations. The last movement, Tempo di marcia, is a reminiscence of a funeral march with recitatives of the violas, solo instruments and entire instrumental groups” (p. 9). At that time the composer did not reveal to the listeners the information about his secret inspiration, which he revealed only in one of his letters to Józef Czapski (7/8 February 1976) and wrote over the line system in the manuscript of the symphony – it was Czesław Miłosz’s poem “Obłoki” [Clouds], which the Mycielski intended to set to music as a song before the war (on the basis of the correspondence with Marcin Krajewski, 5 April 2019). Mycielski explained to Czapski the entire procedure of transferring the rhythm of the poetic text as the rhythmic basis of the material of movement IV (Grave. Tempo di marcia). Interestingly, the printed version of the score, slightly revised in comparison with the manuscript, no longer contains Miłosz’s poem.

There is no doubt that the architectural and dramaturgical plan of Symphony No. 5 was based by Mycielski on a reinterpreted model of the sonata cycle, a fact pointed out by Andrzej Chłopecki, who after listening to the work during the Poznań Music Spring in April 1978 wrote:

If [Kazimierz] Sikorski is a neoclassicist, then Mycielski – a neoclassicist using his system of omitted notes and added rhythmic values. The first movement with a nervous, jerky narrative – points, lines, planes, tensions, suspensions, harmonisations and disharmonisations. In the second movement a ‘leading’ piano – a short, impressionistic movement, with arabesques of the woodwinds and massive brass. The third movement – a motoric vivace in a measured, dissyncopated rhythm: balanced, mobile sound in instrumental groups engaging in a dialogue. At the end a funeral march with discreet Chopin reminiscences and double bass ostinatos, like in Penderecki’s Passacaglia from Magnificat (Andrzej Chłopecki, “XVIII Poznańska Wiosna Muzyczna. Festiwal dla kompozytorów”, Ruch Muzyczny 1978 no. 12, p. 10).