Symphony

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A performance of Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony in the Kölner Philharmonie by the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal [de] conducted by Heinz Walter Florin [de]

A symphony is an extended

musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts (e.g., Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
).

Etymology and origins

The word symphony is derived from the Greek word συμφωνία (symphōnía), meaning "agreement or concord of sound", "concert of vocal or instrumental music", from σύμφωνος (sýmphōnos), "harmonious".[1] The word referred to a variety of different concepts before ultimately settling on its current meaning designating a musical form.

In late Greek and medieval theory, the word was used for consonance, as opposed to διαφωνία (diaphōnía), which was the word for "dissonance".[2] In the Middle Ages and later, the Latin form symphonia was used to describe various instruments, especially those capable of producing more than one sound simultaneously.[2] Isidore of Seville was the first to use the word symphonia as the name of a two-headed drum[citation needed], and from c. 1155 to 1377 the French form symphonie was the name of the organistrum or hurdy-gurdy. In late medieval England, symphony was used in both of these senses, whereas by the 16th century it was equated with the dulcimer. In German, Symphonie was a generic term for spinets and virginals from the late 16th century to the 18th century.[3]

In the sense of "sounding together," the word begins to appear in the titles of some works by 16th- and 17th-century composers including Giovanni Gabrieli's Sacrae symphoniae, and Symphoniae sacrae, liber secundus, published in 1597 and 1615, respectively; Adriano Banchieri's Eclesiastiche sinfonie, dette canzoni in aria francese, per sonare, et cantare, Op. 16, published in 1607; Lodovico Grossi da Viadana's Sinfonie musicali, Op. 18, published in 1610; and Heinrich Schütz's Symphoniae sacrae, Op. 6, and Symphoniarum sacrarum secunda pars, Op. 10, published in 1629 and 1647, respectively. Except for Viadana's collection, which contained purely instrumental and secular music, these were all collections of sacred vocal works, some with instrumental accompaniment.[4][5]

Baroque era

In the 17th century, for most of the Baroque era, the terms symphony and sinfonia were used for a range of different compositions, including instrumental pieces used in operas, sonatas and concertos—usually part of a larger work. The opera sinfonia, or Italian overture had, by the 18th century, a standard structure of three contrasting movements: fast, slow, fast and dance-like. It is this form that is often considered as the direct forerunner of the orchestral symphony. The terms "overture", "symphony" and "sinfonia" were widely regarded as interchangeable for much of the 18th century.[5]

In the 17th century, pieces scored for large instrumental ensemble did not precisely designate which instruments were to play which parts, as is the practice from the 19th century to the current period. When composers from the 17th century wrote pieces, they expected that these works would be performed by whatever group of musicians were available. To give one example, whereas the bassline in a 19th-century work is scored for cellos, double basses and other specific instruments, in a 17th-century work, a basso continuo part for a sinfonia would not specify which instruments would play the part. A performance of the piece might be done with a basso continuo group as small as a single cello and harpsichord. However, if a bigger budget was available for a performance and a larger sound was required, a basso continuo group might include multiple chord-playing instruments (harpsichord, lute, etc.) and a range of bass instruments, including cello, double bass, bass viol or even a serpent, an early bass wind instrument.

Galant and classical eras

LaRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson write in the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians that "the symphony was cultivated with extraordinary intensity" in the 18th century.[6] It played a role in many areas of public life, including church services,[7] but a particularly strong area of support for symphonic performances was the aristocracy. In Vienna, perhaps the most important location in Europe for the composition of symphonies, "literally hundreds of noble families supported musical establishments, generally dividing their time between Vienna and their ancestral estate [elsewhere in the Empire]". [8] Since the normal size of the orchestra at the time was quite small, many of these courtly establishments were capable of performing symphonies. The young Joseph Haydn, taking up his first job as a music director in 1757 for the Morzin family, found that when the Morzin household was in Vienna, his own orchestra was only part of a lively and competitive musical scene, with multiple aristocrats sponsoring concerts with their own ensembles.[9]

LaRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson's article traces the gradual expansion of the symphonic orchestra through the 18th century.[10] At first, symphonies were string symphonies, written in just four parts: first violin, second violin, viola, and bass (the bass line was taken by cello(s), double bass(es) playing the part an octave below, and perhaps also a bassoon). Occasionally the early symphonists even dispensed with the viola part, thus creating three-part symphonies. A basso continuo part including a bassoon together with a harpsichord or other chording instrument was also possible.[10]

The first additions to this simple ensemble were a pair of horns, occasionally a pair of oboes, and then both horns and oboes together. Over the century, other instruments were added to the classical orchestra: flutes (sometimes replacing the oboes), separate parts for bassoons, clarinets, and trumpets and timpani. Works varied in their scoring concerning which of these additional instruments were to appear. The full-scale classical orchestra, deployed at the end of the century for the largest-scale symphonies, has the standard string ensemble mentioned above, pairs of winds (flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons), a pair of horns, and timpani. A keyboard continuo instrument (harpsichord or piano) remained an option.

The "Italian" style of symphony, often used as overture and entr'acte in opera houses, became a standard three-movement form: a fast movement, a slow movement, and another fast movement. Over the course of the 18th century it became the custom to write four-movement symphonies,[11] along the lines described in the next paragraph. The three-movement symphony died out slowly; about half of Haydn's first thirty symphonies are in three movements;[12] and for the young Mozart, the three-movement symphony was the norm, perhaps under the influence of his friend Johann Christian Bach.[13] An outstanding late example of the three-movement Classical symphony is Mozart's Prague Symphony, from 1786.

The four-movement form that emerged from this evolution was as follows:[14][15]

  1. An opening sonata or allegro
  2. A slow movement, such as andante
  3. A minuet or scherzo with trio
  4. An allegro, rondo, or sonata

Variations on this layout, like changing the order of the middle movements or adding a slow introduction to the first movement, were common. Haydn, Mozart and their contemporaries restricted their use of the four-movement form to orchestral or multi-instrument chamber music such as quartets, though since Beethoven solo sonatas are as often written in four as in three movements.[16]

The composition of early symphonies was centred on Milan, Vienna, and Mannheim. The Milanese school centred around Giovanni Battista Sammartini and included Antonio Brioschi, Ferdinando Galimberti and Giovanni Battista Lampugnani. Early exponents of the form in Vienna included Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Wenzel Raimund Birck and Georg Matthias Monn, while later significant Viennese composers of symphonies included Johann Baptist Wanhal, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and Leopold Hofmann. The Mannheim school included Johann Stamitz.[17]

The most important symphonists of the latter part of the 18th century are Haydn, who wrote at least 106 symphonies over the course of 36 years,[18] and Mozart, with at least 47 symphonies in 24 years.[19]

Romantic era

At the beginning of the 19th century, Beethoven elevated the symphony from an everyday genre produced in large quantities to a supreme form in which composers strove to reach the highest potential of music in just a few works.[20] Beethoven began with two works directly emulating his models Mozart and Haydn, then seven more symphonies, starting with the Third Symphony ("Eroica") that expanded the scope and ambition of the genre. His Symphony No. 5 is perhaps the most famous symphony ever written; its transition from the emotionally stormy C minor opening movement to a triumphant major-key finale provided a model adopted by later symphonists such as Brahms[21] and Mahler.[citation needed] His Symphony No. 6 is a programmatic work, featuring instrumental imitations of bird calls and a storm; and, unconventionally, a fifth movement (symphonies usually had at most four movements). His Symphony No. 9 includes parts for vocal soloists and choir in the last movement, making it a choral symphony.[22]

Of the symphonies by Schubert, two are core repertory items and are frequently performed. Of the Eighth Symphony (1822), Schubert completed only the first two movements; this highly Romantic work is usually called by its nickname "The Unfinished". His last completed symphony, the Ninth (1826) is a massive work in the Classical idiom.[23]

Of the early Romantics,

the symphonies by Bruckner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saëns, Borodin, Dvořák, and Franck—works which largely avoided the programmatic elements of Berlioz and Liszt and dominated the concert repertory for at least a century.[20]

Over the course of the 19th century, composers continued to add to the size of the symphonic orchestra. Around the beginning of the century, a full-scale orchestra would consist of the string section plus pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, and lastly a set of timpani.[25] This is, for instance, the scoring used in Beethoven's symphonies numbered 1, 2, 4, 7, and 8. Trombones, which had previously been confined to church and theater music, came to be added to the symphonic orchestra, notably in Beethoven's 5th, 6th, and 9th symphonies. The combination of bass drum, triangle, and cymbals (sometimes also: piccolo), which 18th-century composers employed as a coloristic effect in so-called "Turkish music", came to be increasingly used during the second half of the 19th century without any such connotations of genre.[25] By the time of Mahler (see below), it was possible for a composer to write a symphony scored for "a veritable compendium of orchestral instruments".[25] In addition to increasing in variety of instruments, 19th-century symphonies were gradually augmented with more string players and more wind parts, so that the orchestra grew substantially in sheer numbers, as concert halls likewise grew.[25]

Late-Romantic, modernist and postmodernist eras

Towards the end of the 19th century, Gustav Mahler began writing long, large-scale symphonies that he continued composing into the early 20th century. His Third Symphony, completed in 1896, is one of the longest regularly performed symphonies at around 100 minutes in length for most performances. The Eighth Symphony was composed in 1906 and is nicknamed the "Symphony of a Thousand" because of the large number of voices required to perform the work.

The 20th century saw further diversification in the style and content of works that composers labeled symphonies.

Alpine Symphony, in one movement, split into twenty-two parts, detailing an eleven hour hike through the mountains and Alan Hovhaness's Symphony No. 9, Saint Vartan—originally Op. 80, changed to Op. 180—composed in 1949–50, is in twenty-four.[27]

A concern with unification of the traditional four-movement symphony into a single, subsuming formal conception had emerged in the late 19th century. This has been called a "two-dimensional symphonic form", and finds its key turning point in

Chamber Symphony No. 1, Op. 9 (1909), which was followed in the 1920s by other notable single-movement German symphonies, including Kurt Weill's First Symphony (1921), Max Butting's Chamber Symphony, Op. 25 (1923), and Paul Dessau's 1926 Symphony.[28]

Alongside this experimentation, other 20th-century symphonies deliberately attempted to evoke the 18th-century origins of the genre, in terms of form and even musical style, with prominent examples being Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1 "Classical" of 1916–17 and the Symphony in C by Igor Stravinsky of 1938–40.[29]

There remained, however, certain tendencies. Designating a work a "symphony" still implied a degree of sophistication and seriousness of purpose. The word sinfonietta came into use to designate a work that is shorter, of more modest aims, or "lighter" than a symphony, such as Sergei Prokofiev's Sinfonietta for orchestra.[30][31]

In the first half of the century, composers including Edward Elgar, Gustav Mahler, Jean Sibelius, Carl Nielsen, Igor Stravinsky, Bohuslav Martinů, Roger Sessions, Sergei Prokofiev, Rued Langgaard and Dmitri Shostakovich composed symphonies "extraordinary in scope, richness, originality, and urgency of expression".[32] One measure of the significance of a symphony is the degree to which it reflects conceptions of temporal form particular to the age in which it was created. Five composers from across the span of the 20th century who fulfil this measure are Jean Sibelius, Igor Stravinsky, Luciano Berio (in his Sinfonia, 1968–69), Elliott Carter (in his Symphony of Three Orchestras, 1976), and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (in Symphony/Antiphony, 1980).[33]

From the mid-20th century into the 21st there has been a resurgence of interest in the symphony with many postmodernist composers adding substantially to the canon, not least in the United Kingdom: Peter Maxwell Davies (10),[34] Robin Holloway (1),[35] David Matthews (9),[36] James MacMillan (5),[37] Peter Seabourne (5),[38] and Philip Sawyers (3).[39]. British composer Derek Bourgeois has surpassed the number of symphonies written by Haydn, with 116 symphonies.[40] The greatest number of symphonies to date has been composed by the Finn Leif Segerstam, whose list of works includes 352 symphonies.[41]

Symphonies for concert band

better source needed
]

After those early efforts, few symphonies were written for wind bands until the 20th century when more symphonies were written for

Symphony No. 1 "The Lord of the Rings", composed in 1988, and his Symphony No. 2 "The Big Apple", composed in 1993; Yasuhide Ito's Symphony in Three Scenes 'La Vita', composed in 1998, which is his third symphony for wind band; John Corigliano's Symphony No. 3 'Circus Maximus, composed in 2004; Denis Levaillant's PachaMama Symphony, composed in 2014 and 2015,[47] and James M. Stephenson's Symphony No. 2 which was premiered by the United States Marine Band ("The President's Own") and received both the National Band Association's William D. Revelli (2017)[48] and the American Bandmasters Association's Sousa/Ostwald (2018)[49]
awards.

Other modern usages of "symphony"

In some forms of English, the word "symphony" is also used to refer to the

OED gives "Vancouver Symphony" as a possible abbreviated form of Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.[50][51] Additionally, in common usage, a person may say they are going out to hear a symphony perform, a reference to the orchestra and not the works on the program. These usages are not common in British English
.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Symphony", Oxford English Dictionary (online version ed.)
  2. ^ a b Brown 2001
  3. ^ Marcuse 1975, p. 501.
  4. ^ Bowman 1971, p. 7.
  5. ^ a b LaRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson (2001).
  6. ^ LaRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson (2001), §I.2, citing two scholarly catalogs listing over 13,000 distinct works: LaRue 1959 and LaRue 1988.
  7. ^ LaRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson (2001), §I.2.
  8. ^ LaRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson (2001), §I.10.
  9. ^ Carpani, Giuseppe (1823). Le Haydine, ovvero Lettere su la vita e le opere del celebre maestro Giuseppe Haydn (Second ed.). p. 66.
  10. ^ a b LaRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson (2001), §I.4.
  11. .
  12. ISBN 978-1441118455.. Excerpts online at [1]
    .
  13. ISBN 0931340799. Excerpts online at [2]
    .
  14. ^ Jackson 1999, p. 26.
  15. ^ Stein 1979, p. 106.
  16. ^ Prout 1895, p. 249.
  17. ^ Anon. n.d.
  18. ^ Webster 2001.
  19. ^ Eisen & Sadie 2001.
  20. ^ a b Dahlhaus 1989, p. 265
  21. ^ Libbey 1999, p. 40.
  22. Peter von Winter's Schlacht-Sinfonie ("Battle Symphony"), which includes a concluding chorus and was written in 1814, ten years before Beethoven's Ninth. Source: LaRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson 2001
  23. ^ Rosen 1997, p. 521.
  24. ^ Macdonald 2001, §3: 1831–42.
  25. ^ a b c d LaRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson (2001), II.1.
  26. ^ Anon. 2008.
  27. ^ Tawa 2001, p. 352.
  28. ^ Vande Moortele 2013, 269, 284n9.
  29. ISSN 0027-4631
    .
  30. ^ Kennedy 2006.
  31. ^ Temperley 2001.
  32. ^ Steinberg 1995, 404.
  33. ^ Grimley 2013, p. 287.
  34. ^ Whittall, Arnold (14 March 2016). "Contemporary Composer – Sir Peter Maxwell Davies". Gramophone. Retrieved 12 July 2020.
  35. ^ "Prom 27: Robin Holloway, Strauss & Brahms". BBC. 4 August 2011. Retrieved 12 July 2020.
  36. ^ Bratby, Richard (17 May 2018). "Natural selection". The Spectator. Retrieved 12 July 2020.
  37. ^ Ashley, Tim (4 August 2015). "BBCSSO/Runnicles review – MacMillan premiere and the raw power of Mahler". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 July 2020.
  38. ^ "Peter Seabourne's Symphony of Roses is given a triumphant world premiere by the Biel Solothurn Theatre Orchestra, Switzerland conducted by Kaspar Zehnder". theclassicalreviewer.blogspot.com. The Classical Reviewer. 13 July 2016. Retrieved 12 July 2020.
  39. ^ Rickards, Guy. "Sawyers Symphony No 3. Songs of Loss and Regret". Gramophone. Retrieved 12 July 2020.
  40. ^ "Catalogue". www.derekbourgeois.com. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
  41. ^ "The (Mis)numbering of symphonies".
  42. ^ "Commemoration Symphony (Reicha)". The Wind Repertory Project (Wiki).
  43. ^ Battisti 2002, p. 42.
  44. ^ See List of compositions by Alan Hovhaness
  45. ^ "Suspending Time and Figuring Out the Impossible—Remembering David Maslanka (1943-2017)". NewMusicBox. 31 August 2017.
  46. ^ "Julie Giroux: A Wind Band is a Box of 168 Crayons". NewMusicBox. 16 December 2020.
  47. ^ Vagne, Thierry (17 February 2016). "Denis Levaillant – Pachamama Symphony". vagnethierry.fr (in French). Retrieved 15 December 2020.
  48. ^ "James Stephenson Wins 2017 NBA Revelli Award". NewMusicBox. 4 January 2018.
  49. ^ "2018 Sousa-ABA-Ostwald Award Winner". American Bandmasters Association. 20 December 2018.
  50. ^ OED, definition 5d:ellipt. for 'symphony orchestra'
  51. ^ Paul Whiteman; Mary Margaret McBride (1926). Jazz. xiv. 287. The unknown composer has to pay to get his compositions played by a good symphony.

Sources

Further reading

External links