Most of you who do not make a habit of listening to classical music
will have heard of a Symphony, and know that it is some sort of
portentous orchestral piece listened to by highbrow types wearing
appreciative frowns. But I suspect that a much smaller proportion have
some clear idea of what a Symphony actually is, and why it is at all
important. If you are interested to learn
a little more, this post is for you. But be forewarned - I am not a
trained musicologist, so if you like what you read here, don’t treat it
as gospel, but rather as inspiration to read further, from more
authoritative sources.
The term “Symphony” actually has its
roots in words of ancient Greek origin originally used to describe
certain musical instruments. They have been applied to pipes, stringed
instruments, a primitive hurdy-gurdy, and even drums. By the middle
ages, similar words were being used for musical compositions of various
forms. It is not until the eighteenth century that composers - most
prominently Haydn and Mozart - began using the term Symphony to describe
a particular form of orchestral composition that we may find familiar
today.
Beginning in the Renaissance, the wealthiest European
monarchs and princely classes began to assemble troupes of resident
musicians in their courts. Although churches had for centuries
maintained elaborate choirs, and travelling troubadours have been
mentioned in the historical record since time immemorial, it was really
only in this period that the concept of what we would now identify as an
orchestra began to take shape. Since orchestras didn’t heretofore
exist, it follows that composers of orchestral music also didn’t exist
either, and the two had to develop and evolve hand in hand. Court
composers composed, as a rule, at their masters’ pleasure. They wrote
what they were told to write, rather than what they were inspired to
write. The purpose of the “orchestra” was mainly to provide music to
dance to, although special pieces were sometimes commissioned from the
court composer for ceremonial occasions.
As music and
musicianship grew, so the scope of compositions began to grow in order
to highlight the advancing skills of the performers. Musical forms
began to develop which would showcase these talents, and compositional
styles emerged which would enable these performers to express their
talents in the form of extended playing pieces where they would
elaborate both their own playing skills, and the composer’s evolving
compositional ideas. Specialist composers began to emerge, culminating
in Johann Sebastian Bach, who would go on to codify many of the
compositional and structural building blocks which continue to underpin
all western music today. It might surprise many readers to learn that
today’s pop & rock music adheres very firmly to the principles first
set forth by Bach, far more so than do its modern classical
counterparts.
By the late 18th century, specialist composers
had fully emerged, brimming - indeed exploding - with musical ideas.
Many of those ideas involved utilizing the seemingly unlimited
expressive potential of the musical ensemble we call an orchestra, but
there were few accepted musical forms which composers could use to
realize these ambitions. What emerged was the Symphony. Musical forms
did exist for shorter, simpler pieces. What the new classical
symphonists did was to establish ways of stitching together groups of
smaller pieces to make an interesting new whole, which they called a
Symphony.
Haydn and Mozart established that a Symphony could be
constructed by taking a simple, but highly structured established form
such as a Sonata (think Lennon & McCartney) and combining it first
with a slower piece and then with a faster piece by way of contrast, and
concluding with an up-tempo musical form (such as a Rondo) which has a
propensity to drive towards a satisfying and natural conclusion.
Eventually, composers would learn to link the four “movements” together
by thematic, harmonic, or tonal elements. In any case, the idea was
that the four movements would together express musical ideas that
exceeded the sum of their parts.
In the next century,
particularly thanks to Beethoven, the Symphony grew to become the
ultimate expression of compositional ideas. When a composer designates a
work a Symphony, it implies both the deployment of the highest levels
of musical sophistication, and great seriousness of purpose. Indeed
many composers were (and are) reluctant to apply the term to
compositions which in their minds failed to meet their personal
expectations of what the form demands.
So what, then does the
form demand? As time has gone on, the answer to that has grown
increasingly abstract. In my view, what it demands more than anything
else is structure, which sounds terribly pompous, so I need to describe
what I mean by that. Structure is the framework upon which the music
expresses its message. I think the easiest possible way to explain that
is to listen to the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th symphony (with
Carlos Kleiber conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, if you can
get hold of it). Everybody knows the famous 4-note motif which open the
piece - DA-DA-DA-DAAAAA!, and then repeats one tone lower. The entire
first movement is all about Beethoven explaining to us what he means by
that 4-note motif. The piece sets about exploring and developing it in
different ways. We hear it in different keys, at different pitches,
played by different instruments and by the orchestra in unison, at
different tempi, as the main theme and as part of the orchestra’s
chattering accompaniment. It starts off famously as an interrogatory
statement - three notes and then down a third with a portentous dwell on
the fourth note. By the end of the movement the motif has modulated
into a triumphant phrase - three notes and then up a fourth, with the
fourth note punched out like an exclamation point. The opening of the
movement has asked a (musical) question, then went on to explore the
matter in some detail, and finished with a definitive answer. This is
what I mean by structure. By the time the movement is over, I feel I
know all I need to know about the 4-note motif, or at at least all that
Beethoven has to say about tit.
A symphony can be a mammoth
piece - some are over an hour long. Four movements is traditional, but
five or six are common. What is needed to make a symphony work is that
its musical message must be properly conveyed across its whole. It
needs to feel incomplete if any parts are missing. It needs to feel
wrong if the movements are played in the wrong order. And above all it
needs to give up its mysteries reluctantly; it doesn’t want to be a
cheap date - it wants your commitment too. A symphony is all about that
structure, how its musical ideas are developed both within the
individual movements, and also across the entirety of the work. These
musical ideas may not be overt - indeed they can be totally hidden in
such a way that experts have never managed to fully uncover them in over
a hundred years. It may even be that the composer himself only knows
those things in his subconscious. Some symphonies are programmatic -
which is to say that the composer himself has acknowledged that it sets
about telling a particular story - a fine example is the 7th Symphony of
Shostakovich which represents the siege of Leningrad in WWII. Some
symphonies express acknowledged thoughts, emotions, and musical
recollections evoking a particular subject - such as Mendelssohn’s
Italian (No 4) and Scottish (No 3) symphonies and Corigliano’s 1st
symphony (prompted by the AIDS epidemic). Many entire symphonic oevres
were prompted by profoundly religious (i.e Bruckner) or existential (i.e
Mahler) emotions.
You can’t talk about the Symphony without
talking about the dreaded “curse of the ninth”. Beethoven wrote nine
symphonies then died. Shortly afterwards, Schubert died with his 9
symphonies (one unfinished) in the bag. Then came Dvorak, Bruckner, and
Mahler. There are others, including the English composer Ralph Vaughan
Williams. Arnold Schoenberg wrote “It seems that the Ninth is a limit.
He who wants to go beyond it must pass away … Those who have written a
Ninth stood too close to the hereafter.” Some composers went to great
lengths to avoid writing a ninth symphony without getting the tenth
safely in the bag immediately afterwards. These include Gustav Mahler
whose ninth symphony he instead titled “Das Lied Von Der Erde”. With
that safely published he wrote his formal 9th symphony … and then
expired with his 10th barely begun. Amusing though it might be, the
“curse of the ninth” is of course a fallacy, but one which remains
acknowledged by many contemporary composers as a superstition in whose
eye they really don’t want to poke a stick.
Some great
composers wrote little of note outside of their symphonic output.
Others never once in long and productive careers turned their hand to
the format - Wagner and Verdi spring to mind. There are a few who were
strangely reluctant to approach the form - Stravinsky composed four of
them, but pointedly refused to assign numbers to them. In any case, the
most important aspect of a Symphony is that - with very few exceptions -
they reflect the composer’s most sincere, and personally committed
works. They are therefore often listed amongst their composer’s most
significant, most important works. And they are also among the most
performed and recorded.
Here are a list of Symphonies that
might go easy on the ear of a new listener interested in exploring the
oevre, with some recommended recordings:
Mozart: Symphony No 40 (McKerras, Prague Chamber, Telarc)
Beethoven: Symphony No 5 (Kleiber, Vienna Philharmonic, DG)
Brahms: Symphony No 4 (Kleiber, Vienna Philharmonic, DG)
Dvorak: Symphony No 8 (Kertesz, LSO, Decca)
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 6 (Haitink, Royal Concertgebouw, Philips)
And a few that might challenge the already initiated:
Nielsen: Symphony No 5 (Davis, LSO, LSO Live!)
Mahler: Symphony No 7 (Tilson Thomas, SF Symphony, Blue Coast)
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No 5 (Boult, London Philharmonic, EMI)
Corigliano: Symphony No 1 (Barenboim, Chicago Symphony, Erato)
Shostakovich: Symphony No 7 (Haitink, London Philharmonic, Decca)
