Symphony

A symphony is a large-scale musical composition for an orchestra. Since the late eighteenth century, composers have regarded the symphony as “the central form of orchestral composition”, similar to how writers of fiction regard the novel, and filmmakers the feature film. According to music historian Michael Kennedy, the symphony “is reserved by composers for their most weighty and profound orchestral thoughts, but of course there are many light-hearted, witty, and entertaining symphonies.”

Beginnings

In the seventeenth century, a sinfonia was, most generally, a short instrumental piece that served as an introduction to a larger work, such as an overture to an opera or a cantata. But the term also referred to instrumental works that stood alone, such as a concerto grosso (e.g., Allesandro Stradella’s sinfonie a più istrumenti). Moreover, ‘sinfonia’ and ‘concerto’ and even ‘sonata’ were often used as synonyms. A sinfonia, in its form as overture, was often structured in three movements: fast-slow-fast.

During the eighteenth century, the sinfonie as ‘symphony’ — an independent, multi-movement musical piece for concert performance in which one instrument doesn’t dominate, such as in a concerto — developed in various parts of Europe concurrently, such as in Italy, as evidenced by works by Giovanni Battista Sammartini; Vienna, notably by Georg Christoph Wagenseil and Georg Monn; and in Mannheim (Germany), where symphonies were written by Johann Stamitz and F. X. Richter, among others. At this time the symphony was a structure still under development, and repeated experimentation was expanding the complexity of this relatively new musical form.

The Classical Symphony

The symphony continued to grow in importance, complexity and scale during the eighteenth century. The structure of a symphony at this time was typically in four movements: (1) allegro, (2) minuet or scherzo, (3) slow movement, (4) allegro. In the second half of the eighteenth century Franz Joseph Haydn wrote 107 symphonies, many of which experimented with the form (some have six movements, for example); and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote 41 symphonies (the first was written when he was eight years old). Haydn and Mozart are considered the most celebrated composers of the Classical Symphony.

The Romantic Symphony

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote 9 symphonies, and in the process single-handedly expanded the structure of the symphonic form. His Third Symphony, the “Eroica” (1804), was groundbreaking in terms of running time, complexity of orchestration, and – in the words of one contemporary music scholar – its “colossal ideas”. His Ninth Symphony (1823) was yet grander still: it was not only the longest symphony written up to then (in terms in running time), but it also featured the inclusion of human voices in the fourth movement.

Symphony Post-Beethoven

Symphonies, while generally are structured in four movements, can, in fact, be structured according to the wishes of the composer. For example, Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony is in five movements; Mahler’s Eighth is in two movements; Shostakovich’s Fourteenth is in eleven movements; and Schnittke’s Fourth is structured as one movement.

High points of the symphony post-Beethoven include:

Franz Schubert wrote 9 (between 1813 – 1825);

Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky wrote 6 (bet. 1866 – 1893);

Johannes Brahms wrote 4 (bet. 1876 – 1885);

Anton Bruckner wrote 10 (bet. 1866 – 1894);

Gustav Mahler wrote 9 (bet. 1884 – 1909);

Jean Sibelius wrote 7 (bet. 1898 – 1924);

Sergey Prokofiev wrote 7 (bet. 1916 – 1952);

Dmitry Shostakovich wrote 15 (bet. 1924 – 1971);

Alfred Schnittke wrote 8 (bet. 1972 – 1994).

Just as music scholar Gerald Abraham refers to a symphonic “line” from Schubert to Mahler , so Alexander Ivashkin, world renowned cellist and music scholar, has written: “With Schnittke’s music we are possibly standing at the end of the great symphonic route from Mahler to Shostakovich.”

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