# Sacrilege - making your own symphony by combining movements from various symphonies



## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

I guess for most of you this would be sacrilege. There is a reason why certain symphonies have certain movements in certain order. They are supposed to be played as a whole thing and one movement can't function independently from others. Only when they are experienced together, in the right order, as intended by composer, only then they make complete sense.

That's the official viewpoint, at least I guess.

Now, a controversial question:

would it be possible to create "new" symphonies by combining movements from different existing symphonies and putting them perhaps in a new desired order?

Now, even more controversial question: would it be possible to create even better symphony in this way?

For example you create a symphony X, for example for the first movement, you take a movement from another symphony (doesn't even have to be first movement...), for the second movement, the same, etc... until you have a new unique combination of four movements in your own order...

If we just take Beethoven's symphonic opus, there is a total of 36 movements.

From these you can make
36! / (36−4)! = 1.413.720 ordered sets of 4 different movements, or in other words, 1.413.720 symphonies.

Now this is an insanely large number... So I am wondering in this huge number, do you think some possibilities could actually make sense... or... God forbid... make more sense then actual Beethoven symphonies?!


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Some of *Beethoven*'s symphonies have themes in a single movement that is linked to a later or earlier movement in the same symphony.

For instance, the obvious example, *Symphony 9, IV. Finale* uses themes from all three previous movements in its introduction.


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## Ravn (Jan 6, 2020)

Not movements from symphonies, but my ideal symphony would be (all Varese)

1. Arcana
2. Hyperprism
3. Ionisation
4. Ameriques


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

This was sometimes done historically. Baroque suites and classical symphonies up to late Mozart and Haydn were not always played complete anyway or sometimes the movements interspersed with other pieces. The more frequent case is that one movement was replaced by another newly composed one or that e.g. a menuet was added/removed in a symphony. I am not quite sure but I think that the 2nd mvmt "allegretto" from Beethoven's 7th was so immensely popular that it was on occasions inserted in his 8th? or 2nd? a minor is unusual but not impossible within D (dominant minor) or F major (III minor). Other movements would have to be transposed because the tonalities would not fit.
When Schubert's "Unfinished" b minor was publicly performed for the first time in the 1860s the scherzo or finale of his 3rd symphony in D major was played as a 3rd movement because the fragment seemed to fragmentary otherwise. But apparently by the late 19th century it had become customary to play only the 2 extant movements.

I can't think of symphony straight away I would want to "improve" or change in such fashion. The closest idea I could have some sympathy for would be to simply skip/cut the 3rd movements of Brahms' 3rd and 4th...
And I knew a person who claimed he preferred the Waldstein sonata with the "andante favori" instead of the introduzione as a middle movement...


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I'd throw all the Bruckner symphony movements in a hat and randomly draw out a whole new Bruckner symphony (and see how many can tell the difference. )


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

OK. I'll play.

Perhaps it might be easier to take a few shorter single movement orchestral works such as overtures or tone poems and find a way to make a four movement faux-symphony out of that.

*Serclaudantean Rachdebdvorelius - Symphony No. 1
*
I. Lento _[Rachmaninoff: The Isle of the Dead]_ 0:00 - 21:39
II. Trés Modéré _[Debussy: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune]_ 21:40 - 32:40
III. Allegretto _[Antonin Dvorak: The Noon Witch]_ 32:41 - 46:57
IV. Andante sostenuto (ma non troppo) _[Sibelius: Finlandia]_ 46:58 - 56:31


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Interesting idea...it's never really occurred to me....

symphonies don't have a "plot" per se, like an opera, or a novel....but there is certainly a flow, a unity to the, esp the great ones...
I have at times listened to "composite" recordings of symphonies - ie - each movement played in order, but by different conductors/orchestras - for example - Bruckner 7 might be:

I. von Matacic
II. Tennstedt
III. Barenboim
IV. Solti

or some variation....


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

There was a duo I mentioned in another thread called the Cambridge Buskers, consisting of flute (actually various flutes, penny whistles and ocarinas) and accordion, who played clever arrangements of classical standards. They had a piece in which all of the scherzos from Beethoven symphonies were strung together.


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

I believe what the OP describes is called "arrangment." Quite a common practice.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

My dream symphony would be 
I. Beethoven 5/i
II. Beethoven 3/ii
III. Beethoven 5/iii
IV. Beethoven 5/iv


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

hammeredklavier said:


> My dream symphony would be
> I. Beethoven 5/i
> II. Beethoven 3/ii
> III. Beethoven 5/iii
> IV. Beethoven 5/iv


That is practically the same symphony.



pianozach said:


> *Serclaudantean Rachdebdvorelius - Symphony No. 1
> *
> I. Lento _[Rachmaninoff: The Isle of the Dead]_ 0:00 - 21:39
> II. Trés Modéré _[Debussy: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune]_ 21:40 - 32:40
> ...


*Rachmaninoff: The Isle of the Dead* [*1908*: Russian late-Romanticism]
*Debussy: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune* [*1894*: French modern/avant-garde/atonalism]
*Antonin Dvorak: The Noon Witch* [*1896*: Czech/Bohemian Romanticism] 
*Sibelius: Finlandia* [*1899*: Finnish Nationalistic Romanticism]

When I threw these four together it was a fairly random process, and although they come from composers from different parts of Eurasia, they were all composed within a 14-15 year time span.


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## chipia (Apr 22, 2021)

It may seem like a sacrilege but it is not that uncommon. Composers often made large compositions by grouping unrelated shorter pieces together.

For example, the prelude and fugue in Eb minor in Bach's WTC Book 1 were originally two separate pieces. Bach just transposed the Fugue from D to D# and combined it with the prelude to form a pair.


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## BoggyB (May 6, 2016)

How about re-arranging Tchaikovsky's _Pathetique_ so the slow movement goes in the middle and the symphony as a whole ends on a high, like all symphonies should? Just coz old man Tchaikovsky was feeling miserable, doesn't mean he has to foist that on the audience.



Kreisler jr said:


> This was sometimes done historically. Baroque suites and classical symphonies up to late Mozart and Haydn were not always played complete anyway or sometimes the movements interspersed with other pieces. The more frequent case is that one movement was replaced by another newly composed one or that e.g. a menuet was added/removed in a symphony. I am not quite sure but I think that the 2nd mvmt "allegretto" from Beethoven's 7th was so immensely popular that it was on occasions inserted in his 8th? or 2nd? a minor is unusual but not impossible within D (dominant minor) or F major (III minor). Other movements would have to be transposed because the tonalities would not fit.
> When Schubert's "Unfinished" b minor was publicly performed for the first time in the 1860s the scherzo or finale of his 3rd symphony in D major was played as a 3rd movement because the fragment seemed to fragmentary otherwise. But apparently by the late 19th century it had become customary to play only the 2 extant movements.


Interesting, especially the Schubert thing, I didn't know that.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Beethoven Symphony 4 movement 1

Mozart Symphony 40 no. 2

Beethoven Symphony 1 movement 3

Haydn Symphony 104 movement 4


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## christomacin (Oct 21, 2017)

This actually works spectacularly well as a four movement symphony. It could be the greatest symphony Andrzej Panufnik ever wrote:

Tragic Overture (1st Movement)





Katyn Epitath (2nd Movement)





Procession for Peace (3rd Movement)





Heroic Overture (4thMovement)


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Kreisler jr said:


> This was sometimes done historically. Baroque suites and classical symphonies up to late Mozart and Haydn were not always played complete anyway or sometimes the movements interspersed with other pieces. The more frequent case is that one movement was replaced by another newly composed one or that e.g. a menuet was added/removed in a symphony. I am not quite sure but I think that the 2nd mvmt "allegretto" from Beethoven's 7th was so immensely popular that it was on occasions inserted in his 8th? or 2nd? a minor is unusual but not impossible within D (dominant minor) or F major (III minor). Other movements would have to be transposed because the tonalities would not fit.


I remember reading old newspaper reports from as late as the mid-19th century approvingly mentioning that the Eroica was "properly ended after the funeral march". I wanna see a HIP ensemble do this kind of thing now.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I quickly can't think of anything as ghastly as:

Mozart: 40/i
Brahms: 2/ii
Bruckner: 4/iii
Shostakovich: 5/iv


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

I. Rossini: Barber of Seville/Overture (1816)
II: Mendelssohn: Symphony 5/II (1830)
III. Louis Spohr: Symphony 6/III (1840)
IV. Berlioz: Symphony Fantastique, V (1830)


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