# How many symphonies?



## Guest (Nov 5, 2013)

I just now saw a thread from 2007 on another forum with the subject heading "The Greatest Symphony of the 20th Century," and similar kinds of responses to the thread here with the same subject heading. (Though the symphonies that get the most attention are different, interestingly enough.)

I concluded, perhaps hastily, that the more symphonies a participant had heard, the less likely they were to want to answer the question.

Well, we can test that conclusion. A little bit, anyway.

How many symphonies written between January 1, 1900 (just to be as inclusive as possible, you know) and December 31, 2000 have you heard?

(A related question: how many symphonies do you think were written in that span?)

((Another one: how different do you think a symphony finished on December 31, 1899 would be from a piece finished on January 1, 1900? Or even from a piece started on January 1, 1900?))

Then in a year or two or ten, we can tally up the scores and ask the next question: how likely are you to want to answer the question "What is the greatest symphony of the twentieth century?"

[N.B., to anticipate at least one objection, one more question: "Do you think enough time has elapsed for the best of the best to have been separated out from the rest?" (Oops. One last question. I'm seriously. "Do you think that 'best' is a real category?") OK. Over to you.]


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

some guy said:


> How many symphonies written between January 1, 1900 (just to be as inclusive as possible, you know) and December 31, 2000 have you heard?
> 
> (A related question: how many symphonies do you think were written in that span?)
> 
> ...


I don't remember, but a lot. Many I haven't heard all the way through, but I felt I heard enough to assess.

No idea how many symphonies, several thousand I expect.

I actually start a century and a decade from the year 1 than 0. But it's more for easy categorisation purposes than any deep meaning.

I don't think I'll ever want to answer a 'greatest' question, it would be more a matter of my favourites if I can even be bothered to narrow it down to that. And I like continually finding and learning so things are in flux.

Something more could always be discovered, so I'm not sure any personal best list is ever finished.

Best as in the best of something that you have heard by a particular time, but it's likely to be quite a large group of things if you've heard much.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

*How many symphonies have you heard?* Not enough.

*how many symphonies were written: *Too many

*how different do you think a symphony finished on December 31, 1899 would be from a piece finished on January 1, 1900? Or even from a piece started on January 1, 1900?* Grim late night why-didn't-they-invite-me-to-a-party melancholy _vs._ bright, hopeful, achieving, new year, new era! aesthetic

*how likely are you to want to answer the question "What is the greatest symphony of the twentieth century?"*

While I eagerly await the results of your research I rather doubt there is a direct correlation between _number of symphonies heard_ and _willingness to pronounce on greatness_. Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some love building ranked and categorised pyramids of greatness. They will gleefully do that, organising thousands of heard symphonies into a satisfying heap and, sorites notwithstanding, even manage to rank a single item even if that's all they know. Others, myself included, would feel unequal to the task no matter how many or few I knew

*QED:* It's all down to personality types, probably those darn ISTJs

*Addendum:*

1. starry's post
2. some guy's post
3. post 4
4. quack's post


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

Whatever anybody might say here, I have a feeling not being able to answer the question 'What's the best symphony?' is going to be taken as a sign of a higher understanding of music.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

# I don't know about thousands, but it is several hundreds for me, if Y make a quick tally in my head perhaps as much as 8 or 9 hundred.

# Just like a case study, if You search the term "Symphony" excluding it in the performer section + 20th century You get about 550 hits, and if a small country like Sweden can produce such a number over the said 100 years then the total number for the world must be at least 50 or maybe even 100 times bigger!

# Impossible to tell, could range from not at all to significantly different!

# For me that answer can be two folded, one based on a pure intellectual base and one on a pure emotional base, I think it is important to acknowledge that emotion is a very important for how we rate music!

# There's never enough time lapse! But that has never bothered people from having profound thoughts on what is best and what is not!

/ptr


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

shangoyal said:


> not being able to answer the question 'What's the best symphony?' is going to be taken as a sign of a higher understanding of music


wrong, because the best symphony of all times is already there for everyone to see, and it is Beethoven's 9th.


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## Delicious Manager (Jul 16, 2008)

Just a point of order: the 20th century began on 1 January 1901 (because there is no 'year zero' in the adopted calendar system) and ended on 31 December 2000 (which is why the so-called millennium celebrations on 1 January 2000 were so ridiculous, being a whole year too early). 1900 was the last year of the 19th century (the clue is in the '19') and 2000 was the last year of the 20th (same sort of clue in the '20').


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I would estimate that there were approximately 2 million symphonies written between 1 January 1901 and 31 December 2000 (thank you, Delicious Manager). I have heard approximately 30 symphonies from that period, and can say with some certainty that Mahler's 9th is the best of the century. 

:tiphat:


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> How many symphonies written between January 1, 1900 (just to be as inclusive as possible, you know) and December 31, 2000 have you heard?


This one's hard to answer both because I can't remember and it's not clear exactly what a symphony is. The best answer I have is "not enough". Another answer might be 100-200.



some guy said:


> (A related question: how many symphonies do you think were written in that span?)


Again hard to answer because of the definition problem. Presumably there could be many more symphonies written than ever played or recorded. I would guess >> 10000. An interesting question would be, "What percentage of those who have composed a symphony have composed more than one?" I would guess very low.



some guy said:


> ((Another one: how different do you think a symphony finished on December 31, 1899 would be from a piece finished on January 1, 1900? Or even from a piece started on January 1, 1900?))


In general, not much compared to differences between classical music periods.



some guy said:


> Then in a year or two or ten, we can tally up the scores and ask the next question: how likely are you to want to answer the question "What is the greatest symphony of the twentieth century?"


This is actually a rather interesting question. I tend to agree with member quack that the desire to rank symphonies is related more to personality than "number of symphonies heard" or "desire to hear symphonies". Still my gut feeling is that those who have heard a very large number of symphonies might show a lower interest in ranking them.



some guy said:


> [N.B., to anticipate at least one objection, one more question: "Do you think enough time has elapsed for the best of the best to have been separated out from the rest?" (Oops. One last question. I'm seriously. "Do you think that 'best' is a real category?") OK. Over to you.]


"Best" is without question a real category. That's only true if "best" is properly defined (conditions for assessing best clearly described). Furthermore, we can only make an assessment of "best" if all relevant data are available. I can define the best Ford car as "the currently commercial vehicle made by Ford that gets the highest fuel economy on a specified drive cycle." I've never seen a proper definition of "best" in music, and even if there were one, very few would agree that the definition actually defines "best". By this reasoning there will never be enough time elapsed for the "best of the best to have been separated out from the rest."


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Unfortunately, people tend to equate the "best" or "greatest" in classical music with the most popular 
and frequently performed , even though the two are not necessarily the same .
Ditto with the most famous conductors, instrumentlists, and singers .


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2013)

Wikipedia gives a list of 20th Century symphonies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:20th-century_symphonies

This list does not pretend to be exhaustive and I doubt that it is, but would guess that it is likely to be reasonably comprehensive in terms of providing a list of the better-known compositions from this period.

I have not counted the number of symphonies listed in this source but I imagine that it probably runs into several hundred. Among these I have probably heard a good 50%. Considering those with which I am not familiar, I would be extremely surprised if I were to find none that I wished I had heard before now, but it's not likely that I would discover any that might supplant those I currently like best of all among those with which I am presently familiar.

It would not surprise me to discover that, assuming it is possible to enumerate the totality of 20th Century symphonies in a meaningful and valid way, the total number might run into several thousand. I would suspect, however, that a large number of them would be of dubious quality. Even taking only the best of them I am quite confident that it is most unlikely that any of them would become any of my favorite symphonies from that era.

Likewise, if I was asked to say which American city(ies) are my favorite(s), I do not feel that it necessary for me to have visited every city that exists in order to have formed a sensible and reliable view on this matter. I can quite confidently rule out the vast majority of them without ever having set foot in those places, merely because if they were any good they would be better known and I would therefore probably have arranged a visit before now. Another example is that one doesn't need to visit every restaurant in town to know which is the best, or to have formed a reasonably accurate view.

The moral of this for me is that it is not necessary to know how many symphonies were written in the 20th Century, or to be familiar with every single symphony among those that are in the more popular set, in order to form a reliable view of which ones I like the best. I'm happy to accept that my opinion is subject to possible future change, as I acquire further knowledge, but I do expect it to change in a fundamental way. It's another matter altogether to expect sensible results to emerge from the far more limited question of asking for opinions on the greatest 20th symphony. That I think is a dubious question.


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2013)

Delicious Manager said:


> 1900 was the last year of the 19th century (the clue is in the '19') and 2000 was the last year of the 20th (same sort of clue in the '20').


Hahaha, made me scratch my head!

All the other years of the 19th century start with 18, though. (Well, all but one.) Same with 2000.

Here's the flip side of that: a 20 year old is in her 20s, not her teens. (The clue there is in the 20.) But perhaps that's just because humans do indeed start at zero.

Or do they?

Anyway, no point of order was needed. I already explained why I chose to have a century with more than a hundred years in it.

Interesting the speculation that the desire to rank is a matter of personality more than a matter of experience. I had not thought of that. And it is very possibly true.

I was not surprised that a member (I trust tongue-in-cheek, however!) was ready to choose "the best" without having heard very many of the 10,000* or so.... There are members who in actual fact need very little experience to pronounce on an entire oeuvre. Scary.

And finally (for this post, anyway), this:

"Addendum:

1. starry's post
2. some guy's post
3. post 4
4. quack's post"

was one of the funniest things I've seen on TC. (Or one of the funnier, if you prefer.)

*Probably not all that far off an estimate.


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## Rangstrom (Sep 24, 2010)

Those problems are always going to be there. There have been threads where posters were nominating non-existant operas to the best ever list and voting, for example, for the best recorded Fidelio based on viewing a few you-tube clips. I've decided to participate only if I have a fairly broad base of relevant experience and I mentally add the phrase "to me, at this time". 

So I did list the Maw symphony, because I've been listening to it a lot lately and I have heard at least hundreds, if not thousands, of modern symphonies--one of the benefits of being an older collector.

On a side note, I recently did some research on how many operas have been composed (limited to those completed (mostly), performed and still around). My initial searches were inconclusive to say the least. One guess of 3000 seemed way too low. The rough consensus was around 6000, but as I drilled down I suspect the total is in excess of 20,000. Obviously many are obscure, yet I keep finding treasures. I now have two operas by Keiser, but was shocked to find that he wrote more than 100. I couldn't even begin to guess how many symphonies there are.


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## TresPicos (Mar 21, 2009)

some guy said:


> I just now saw a thread from 2007 on another forum with the subject heading "The Greatest Symphony of the 20th Century," and similar kinds of responses to the thread here with the same subject heading. (Though the symphonies that get the most attention are different, interestingly enough.)
> 
> I concluded, perhaps hastily, that the more symphonies a participant had heard, the less likely they were to want to answer the question.


Why would that be the case? If you haven't heard that many symphonies, shouldn't you be less inclined to speak your mind, and instead want to listen to many more symphonies before ranking them?

Also, even if you would eventually be able to prove that the number of symphonies a participant has heard correlates to how willing that participant is to rank those symphonies, there could be a number of reasons for that, and you might still not be able to draw any certain conclusions.

* Listening to more symphonies makes you more humble or mature, and less inclined to rank them, because you now realize that ranking is a mindless activity.

* Listening to more symphonies drains your energy, so you lose interest in many things, including ranking symphonies.

* Listening to more symphonies automatically makes the task of ranking them more complicated, so even if you are, initially, still as eager to rank them, that eagerness quickly dissolves once you are faced with the complexity of the task.

* If you like ranking symphonies, you tend to spend too much time doing that and won't have time to listen to new symphonies.

* If you like ranking stuff, you are probably a control freak, and a control freak is perhaps less inclined to explore new stuff.

* Listening to more symphonies will actually make participants more likely to rank those symphonies, but they choose to sabotage the study by giving false answers, if nothing else just because they can.

* If you don't have enough time to listen to more symphonies, but still want to do something symphony-related, you might at least find the time to rank the ones you've heard.

* If you've heard lots and lots of symphonies, you're probably old, and then you don't want to waste your precious time with ranking activities.

* There is some personality trait that has two effects: it boosts the will to explore new symphonies, and it dulls the will to rank symphonies, without one causing the other.

* There is no correlation of any kind, but the low number of participants allowed a random outcome that happened to match the premise.


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## Guest (Nov 5, 2013)

TresPicos said:


> If you haven't heard that many symphonies, shouldn't you be less inclined to speak your mind, and instead want to listen to many more symphonies before ranking them?


This is certainly what I wish were true.



TresPicos said:


> * There is no correlation of any kind, but the low number of participants allowed a random outcome that happened to match the premise.


Made me grin!


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

_Interesting the speculation that the desire to rank is a matter of personality more than a matter of experience. I had not thought of that. And it is very possibly true._

I think it is absolutely true. I doubt many of us who chimed in on that thread really thought we were naming the BEST symphony in the 20c. Perhaps most were assuming "in my opinion..." was implied. Many of us ignored the OP's literal request and just listed several symphonies we liked.

So the thread lists a bunch of 20c symphonies people like, in in some instances people may have said "hey, I think I'll listen to that." The the thread turned into a somewhat interesting argument over whether music could be "about" something other than itself. All things considered, it isn't a bad thread.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Get Direct TV and you won't care.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*> 300*



some guy said:


> How many symphonies written between January 1, 1900 (just to be as inclusive as possible, you know) and December 31, 2000 have you heard?


I started counting the number in my library and gave up after I got to three hundred.

(Edit, Clarification: I was going through the data base of my library and reached 304 when I got to Mahler.)


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## realdealblues (Mar 3, 2010)

I don't think my list will be that large so I may actually have to count it up...I'm guessing maybe 100.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

some guy said:


> 1.) how many symphonies written between january 1, 1900 (just to be as inclusive as possible, you know) and december 31, 2000 have you heard?
> 
> 2.) how many symphonies do you think were written in that span?
> 
> ...


1.) *a lot*

2.) *many more than a lot*

3.) *from virtually the same harmonic vocabulary to wildly disparate harmonic vocabularies.*

4.) *not at all -- we, including the youngest here, would all have to be dead.*

5.) *not earlier, not now, not later.*


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I'm curious to find out how many I've heard. I'd have to add about 30% to my own library to account for radio and so forth, based on my listening habits. This is a project for the weekend. No time now.


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## jtbell (Oct 4, 2012)

some guy said:


> How many symphonies written between January 1, 1900 (just to be as inclusive as possible, you know) and December 31, 2000 have you heard?


A query of my database turns up 739 compositions with "symphony" in the titie, in my collection, composed 1900-2000. I'm pretty sure I've listened to all of them (or almost all of them, might be a few exceptions) at least once.

By decade:

1900s 43
1910s 62
1920s 63
1930s 75
1940s 127
1950s 103
1960s 70
1970s 65
1980s 57
1990s+2000 74


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## Guest (Nov 6, 2013)

I'd say 5...there or thereabouts.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

jtbell said:


> A query of my database turns up 739 compositions with "symphony" in the titie, in my collection, composed 1900-2000. I'm pretty sure I've listened to all of them (or almost all of them, might be a few exceptions) at least once.
> 
> By decade:
> 
> ...


It appears that your total numbers are similar to mine. There are gaps in my database. I do not have the dates of compositions entered for all of my symphonies. I have listened to all of these and I am very familiar with most of them. Considering the range of styles there is no way I could pick one great symphony.


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