# Tom Service - 50 greatest symphonies



## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Hi all - this could be of interest (may have been posted already - I had a brief look only - so apologies if it has)

http://www.theguardian.com/music/series/50-greatest-symphonies

First impressions are that fifty seems too many and that the inclusion of Shos 15, Rach 3 and Mahler 1 are early signs of just that


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

The first two you list maybe, but certainly not Mahler 1.

Tom Service's journey has usually been mentioned at TC's Composer Guestbooks. :tiphat:


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

A nice and unusually ambitious undertaking for a newspaper, whether one agrees or not with the selection. I like him for that.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

50 is too many? These very forums did 150, but then they were not so much symphonies that changed the world, just recommended for listening.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Mahler 1 must be, what, the 6th best Mahler Symphony? So that should then be about six Mahlers, maybe 5 Shostakovichs at least 7 Beethovens and it's going to be diminishing returns after a short while. "20 Symphonies you should know about" would be a bit punchier and still allow plenty of variety - and may allow Mr Service to avoid trekking over too much worn ground. 

The "greatest" tag just doesn't help much, does it? Except perhaps for filling up the comments with "This philistine clearly does not get my 3rd favourite Rubbra/William Schuman/Magnard/Vanhal/Raff/Hartmann/Holmboe/Hovhaness symphony!!"


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## Garlic (May 3, 2013)

It's shaping up to be a more interesting list than most of this type, although doubtless there will be plenty to quibble about. It's nice that Elgar's 2nd seems to be rising in estimation - I think it's far superior to his 1st. What's wrong with Shostakovich's 15th?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Garlic said:


> What's wrong with Shostakovich's 15th?


Short answer: Nothing. It would certainly make my top 50 symphonies!


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## Guest (Nov 24, 2013)

Excellent - thanks dgee for pointing this out. I'm now listening to Haydn's 6th for the first time, while reading Tom's analysis (consequently struggling to concentrate properly on either!)

I'm particularly impressed by this piece, written about Beethoven's 5th.



> Beethoven's contemporary ETA Hoffmann wrote in 1813 that the Fifth incarnated the romantic axiom that orchestral music, untethered to words or other worldly concepts, could glimpse "the realm of the infinite". This symphony, Hoffman wrote, "sets in motion the machinery of awe, of fear, of terror, of pain, and awakens that infinite yearning which is the essence of romanticism". And that became a whole way of thinking about this symphony and many others, as "pure" or abstract music. But that means you lose sight of what the symphony is trying to do. And what we're at last realising, more than two centuries on, is that the Fifth inhabits the "realm of the infinite" not because it escapes meaning or significance, but because it's saturated by intra- and extra-musical meanings. Read the father of artificial intelligence, Marvin Minsky, on what and how the first few bars of the Fifth Symphony communicate in our brains. From the other side of the debate, John Eliot Gardiner hears - and conducts - the piece as a gloss on the hopes, dreams, and tunes of the French revolution, identifying one of the themes in the finale as related to a melody byRouget de l'Isle, the composer of the Marseillaise.


http://www.theguardian.com/music/to...16/symphony-guide-beethoven-fifth-tom-service

Perhaps I should post it in the 'What is program music' thread?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

E.T.A.Hoffman's comments can be read in the original (translated) here.

https://sites.google.com/site/kenocstuff/eta-hoffman-on-beethoven


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

He's a very engaging writer, that's for sure! I look at a selections like Shos 15 and the Berio and think that there is certainly plenty to write about - and I think that's a point that would quell any quibbles about their selections for an "interesting symphonies" cycle. But after dipping into his Schumann 2 (a less storied symphony), which wasn't quite so involving, I wonder how a "50 greatest" will keep up the pace - but I guess we'll find out!

I'll definitely be following - high potential for symphonic friends old and new. His 50 contemporary composers column was also well worthwhile


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

OhGodAnotherList....

Yes, they serve a purpose, but why so many many many many many many many many many many many of them?

I'd love to see all of them, from the best thought out, to the most populist, the neophyte lists of their top tens, with three going to Beethoven (  )the voted, the empirically one author blog-given etc, compiled into one table, i.e. 19,090 x for Beethoven 3rd & 9th, 04.5 listings for something by Myaskovsky, etc.

The chart could be called the table of elemental collective tastes


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## Guest (Nov 24, 2013)

PetrB said:


> OhGodAnotherList....
> 
> Yes, they serve a purpose, but why so many many many many many many many many many many many of them?
> 
> ...


Well, with respect (to my TC colleagues), this is a list by a journalist whose opinion I value which also provides an analysis of the symphony, links to clips (though they don't all work) and recommended recordings.

I'd better repeat myself: there are a number of TC members whose opinions I also value, but it is the value-added by this particular 'list' that I appreciate.


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

The article says: Tom Service's survey of the 50 symphonies that changed classical music

Well, maybe someone else could explain how Rach 3rd changed classical music. Tom Service has hot convinced me...

BTW who is this journalist? Being from Italy I am not familiar with his name. Thanks for your feedbacks.


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

dgee said:


> Hi all - this could be of interest


It is. Thanks for posting it. :tiphat:


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

GioCar said:


> The article says: Tom Service's survey of the 50 symphonies that changed classical music
> 
> Well, maybe someone else could explain how Rach 3rd changed classical music. Tom Service has hot convinced me...
> 
> BTW who is this journalist? Being from Italy I am not familiar with his name. Thanks for your feedbacks.


_"The Third Symphony finds a melancholic modernity, or rather, it finds a way of making melancholy modern."_
This quality then -- subjective -- is hardly a major milestone, but rather a sort of achievement appropriate to a retro-romantic modern era composer: it is not a musicological milestone, yet it is what places this symphony on this writer's list 

This kind of approach is not meant to persuade or convince anyone to re-write the tomes of Groves, the Larousse Encycopedia of Music and Musicians, or any some such, but rather to give the general public an idea of why he believes the works he lists are "important."

His list does seem better than many another floating about in the ether, and he seems to have given more care than those lists made up of merely the most recognized and popular of works. One of the greatest or most important based on "making melancholy modern?" -- well, whatever sort of achievement that may be, I have to agree with you it is not enough to convince me a work is musically "important."


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Weston said:


> 50 is too many? These very forums did 150, but then they were not so much symphonies that changed the world, just recommended for listening.


I know, there's thousands of symphonies. Perhaps the poster meant 50 is too many for _some_ people to listen through.

As for symphonies that changed the world, what if some did so for the worse? What about symphonies that didn't change anything just because they weren't fashionable or well known?


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Thanks for posting, dgee. I will look into this, I didn't know about it.

BTW, I think Mahler 1 should be there. Composed just over a decade after Brahms' final symphony, and what a leap ahead it is. Mahler's is one of the most imaginative and innovative firsts. Is it a badge of honour that on its premiere it was coolly received? Even so, Budapest was still quite a parochial place in the 1890's.

As for the other two, Shostakovich's 15th isn't a bad swan song and summation of many things in his cycle. 

As for Rachmaninov, his 3rd is similar, it sees him grappling with some of the then more recent trends in music as well as kind of summing up and doing a thing that's very hard - fusing the slow movement and scherzo into the central middle movement (so, a three movement symphony), which some say only Cesar Franck managed to do fully successfully. Rach's third symphony, as well as his fourth piano concerto, was one of the pieces that fell between two stools - not conservative enough for the conservatives, and not radical enough for the radicals. If there was a composer in the 20th century who got the rawest deal from critics, it was Rach. However I think that consensus is that his finest symphony is his second one.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

I thought this was a slow day in TC land, and the response to this thread confirms it. I'm waiting for 'composer bites dog'.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Let's see, 50 Symphonies. *Haydn* 20, *Mozart* 8, *LvB* 7, *Schumann* 4,* Bruckner* 7 *Brahms* 4. Damn, I'm there already...before Dvorak and Mahler! :lol:


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