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

Baroque Period 1600 - ca. 1750

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 ‘trio sonata’ were often used as synonyms. A sinfonia, in its form as overture, was most often structured in three movements: fast-slow-fast (e.g., the Italian opera sinfonias by Alessandro Scarlatti).

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 Matthias Monn; North Germany, where there was a group of early symphonists including C.P.E. Bach; and in Mannheim (Germany), where early 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. Symphonies composed in the eighteenth century up to 1770 are referred to as “preclassic”, and their composers as “preclassical symphonists”.

Why did the symphony grow in prominence? In the Baroque period secular music for the first time became more prominent than sacred music. New musical forms such as the sinfonia-as-proto-symphony registered this change wherein the concert hall, rather than the church, became the premier venue for which to compose music. The first collections of concert symphonies (still referred to as ‘sinfonias’) were published in various places of Europe, such as London, between 1740 and 1750.

Growth of the new musical form was also linked to the expansion of the concept of the orchestra itself. The court orchestras during the Baroque period expanded in size to comprise up to twenty players representing different musical families, particularly strings, woodwinds, and keyboard instruments. Whereas in 1700 most orchestras were private and supported by Royalty, by the end of the eighteenth century orchestras for public concerts had become more and more common, and symphonies were written to fulfil the demand for orchestral concert music.

Most preclassical symphonies were composed in three movements. Although some composers, such as Monn, had been experimenting with the four movement symphony as early as 1740, four movement symphonies didn’t became the norm until around 1770, the birth of the "mature classic symphony".

The Classical Symphony

Mature Classic Symphony 1770s

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) fast, (2) slow, (3) moderately fast, (4) quite fast. 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 was the transitional point from the preclassical symphony to what is referred to as the mature classic symphony. The fourteen symphonies Haydn composed between 1757 and 1761 exemplify many characteristics of the preclassical symphony, while in some ways are already looking forward to the mature classic symphony, which Haydn arrived at between the years 1771 – 1774 (with his symphonies 42 - 56). Mozart arrived at the mature classic symphony during the years 1773 – 1774 (inc. symphonies 25 and 29). Haydn and Mozart are considered the most celebrated composers of the classical symphony.

Flowering at the time of the “Age of Reason” the classical symphony was marked by overall balance and intricate design in which structural symmetry was a general characteristic of a movement.

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 music scholar contemporary with Beethoven – 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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