Symphonies

The sign of a good symphony is a strong sense of architecture, narrative power and interesting orchestration
Gianandrea Noseda

At its root, a symphony is just a large-scale piece of music for orchestra, usually in three or four sections, or ‘movements’. (The word, from Greek, means simply ‘sounding together’.) But it has come to represent the peak of orchestral endeavour, the most monumental of musical genres, the ultimate platform for a composer’s broader vision and the arena in which they both establish and stake their reputation.

In a standard concert programme of overture, concerto and symphony, the symphony is usually the meat among two veg. The so called ‘father of the symphony’ was Joseph Haydn: he wrote 108 of them over 40 or so years from the mid-1750s. Beethoven, with his nine (the last audaciously including a choir), pushed the genre forwards into the Romantic era. It was in this period (roughly the 19th century) that the symphony took wing, with a wider expressive range and a larger orchestra – especially bulging in the wind, brass and percussion departments – to match. Key figures here are Robert Schumann (with four symphonies), Mendelssohn (five), Dvořák and Bruckner (nine each) and Tchaikovsky (seven). With his emotional extremes and wildly varied influences – folk, popular, funereal, religious, military – Mahler dragged the symphony into the 20th century, joined by Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, Shostakovich and Prokofiev.

Though it’s endlessly poked and stretched by composers, underpinning the idea of a symphony is a basic four-movement form: the first medium-fast, arranged in a so-called ‘sonata form’ (that’s for a different article!) and often opening with a slow introduction; the second a slow, lyrical movement; the third a lighter, three-part (ABA) dance-like movement with a contrasting central ‘B’ section before the opening music (A) returns; and the fourth a spirited or exhilarating finale.

The symphony is perhaps the great construct of Western classical music. For the composer it’s a harnessing of the conflicting elements of form and expression. For the listener it is both a great escape and a winding journey, a chance to experience a continuous but shifting musical vista with – if the composer plays ball – a sense of arrival by the end.

By Edward Bhesania