Since science fails to provide all of modern life's solutions, I prefer, like Robert Graves, to believe in myths…at least where music is concerned. My music contains no truisms of musical relationship nor other scientific "conceit". My first symphony was composed in 1966, partly because of a life long affection for the orchestra as a medium of expression and partly because of my admiration for the vital and energetic qualities of my friend, André Previn.

The first of the work's three movements is worked out on two basic themes, in simple metres of four, respectively. The second movement has jazz as its inspiration and features a flute solo written somewhat in the style of the late Eric Dolphy. The third movement features a fugato based on intervallic material taken from the first movement and proceeds through a parody waltz to the work's conclusion.

John T. Williams's Symphony No. 1…shows a masterly grasp of two essentials: he uses the orchestra vividly and effectively, and can control tensions and architect climaxes…And yet—I hope I am not prejudiced by knowledge of his film background—there seems to be a lack of discrimination in his music, a lack of consistency, basically a lack of discipline that at abstract, symphonic composer must posess. The material is excessively diverse: a post-Webernish beginning, then a sentimental trumpet tune, next, an idea built on shifting chromatic chords—how do these ideas relate in a functional, dialectical way basic to symphonic growth? They do not: each is developed, and each recurs, to form a symmetrical shape, but not a whole. The Andante starts off with a fashionable glitter of vibraphone, glockenspiel and the like, and moves on to an improvisatory flute theme over ostinato blues chords; then comes a well architected climax, as if to form a `contrasting middle section'; there is an ingeniously orchestrated, but ingenuously conceived, recapitulation with high violins and horns playing to jazz chords while trumpets and trombones take over the flute idea. The finale is built round a fugue, which works up spaciously to a big tutti; but the pace is unsurely judged, the climax an event without a musically motivated cause.

Apparently Williams was not unsympathetic with this assessment. In 1978 he told Derek Elley, "I want to re-work the Symphony some time: I like the first movement but there are some glaring flaws in the second movement and the last part of the finale which I think I can now put right." Williams programmed a revised version of this work on his April 1987 Houston Symphony concert (along with his Essay for Strings and violin concerto), but by the time of the concert the symphony had been replaced with some film music selections.