The second piece draws upon the idea that people with five-day, Monday-thru-Friday employee responsibilities have the need to pretend that the material and spiritual deprivations that they experience in their work lives are somehow compensated for on the weekends — and that Monday mornings must therefore be made to seem difficult in order that life itself (that is, working-class life) does not seem totally futile.

The third piece contrasts household norms in the United States before and after c. 1970, when one-breadwinner households began to be supplanted by two-breadwinner households, achieving, in effect, a nominal "liberation" for women, in which apparent increases in household income were not necessarily always accompanied by tangible increases in quality of life.

The fourth piece delineates a qualitative change in the attitudes of adolescents in the United States before and after c. 1935, when personal responsibility for lending material support to one's elderly parents was supplanted by social responsibility — and draws a contrast between the respectful gratitude of children toward parents for material support that would subsequently be repaid directly (pre-1935), as opposed to the rebellious ingratitude of children toward parents for material support that would not subsequently be repaid directly (post-1935).

It will be observed that, though the score calls for winds and brass in pairs, only single parts are notated. This is because the secundi are "ripienists" who play only in the loud passages, and who otherwise assist the principals.

—Frank Morana