Symphony

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A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a 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).

The word symphony is derived from the Greek word συμφωνία (symphonia), meaning "agreement or concord of sound", "concert of vocal or instrumental music", from σύμφωνος (symphōnos), "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 (diaphōnia), 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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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 Arnold Schoenberg's 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]

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]

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 (4),[37] Peter Seabourne (5),[38] and Philip Sawyers (3).[39]

After those early efforts, few symphonies were written for wind bands until the 20th century when more symphonies were written for concert band than in past centuries. Although examples exist from as early as 1932, the first such symphony of importance is Nikolai Myaskovsky's Symphony No. 19, Op. 46, composed in 1939.[41] Some further examples are Paul Hindemith's Symphony in B-flat for Band, composed in 1951; Morton Gould's Symphony No. 4 "West Point", composed in 1952; Vincent Persichetti's Symphony No. 6, Op. 69, composed in 1956; Vittorio Giannini's Symphony No. 3, composed in 1958; Alan Hovhaness's Symphonies No. 4, Op. 165, No. 7, "Nanga Parvat", Op. 175, No. 14, "Ararat", Op. 194, and No. 23, "Ani", Op. 249, composed in 1958, 1959, 1961, and 1972 respectively;[42] John Barnes Chance's Symphony No. 2, composed in 1972; Alfred Reed's 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th symphonies, composed in 1979, 1988, 1992, and 1994 respectively; eight of the ten numbered symphonies of David Maslanka;[43] five symphonies to date by Julie Giroux (although she is currently working on a sixth[44]); Johan de Meij's 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,[45] 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)[46] and the American Bandmasters Association's Sousa/Ostwald (2018)[47] awards.

In some forms of English, the word "symphony" is also used to refer to the orchestra, the large ensemble that often performs these works. The word "symphony" appears in the name of many orchestras, for example, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, the Houston Symphony, or Miami's New World Symphony. For some orchestras, "(city name) Symphony" provides a shorter version of the full name; for instance, the OED gives "Vancouver Symphony" as a possible abbreviated form of Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.[48][49] 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. 2b1af7f3a8