# 100 years of symphonies



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Alex Ross holds forth in the latest New Yorker about symphonies of the past century and the present. He talks (briefly) about quite a few composers and gives some impressions, often superficial of course.

How about you? Would you take issue with any of his views? Have something of your own to add?

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-symphony-unfinished


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

While I appreciate that no 20th century symphonic overview can cover everything, I still find it amazing that when Ross manages to talk about Rubbra, Martinu and Tubin amongst others, he makes no reference whatsoever to Ralph Vaughan Williams.


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## Guest (Sep 1, 2015)

Having become, in the last fortnight a world-renowned expert on Coates, I'm content at her notable inclusion. 
Other than that, in my ignorance, I found it an interesting article, so thanks!


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I thought it was an odd article. He starts as if he is going to delve into some important issues, then moves on to do record reviews. As far as content, I didn't have any problem with it.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Becca said:


> While I appreciate that no 20th century symphonic overview can cover everything, I still find it amazing that when Ross manages to talk about Rubbra, Martinu and Tubin amongst others, he makes no reference whatsoever to Ralph Vaughan Williams.


A remarkable oversight. Other Brits deserving mention are Malcolm Arnold, William Alwyn, and George Lloyd, and there's a bunch of Scandinavians left out. But obviously the article wasn't intended to be exhaustive.


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## Balthazar (Aug 30, 2014)

An interesting article that gave me a few works to add to my listening queue. 

Among important symphonists not mentioned, I would put Karl Amadeus Hartmann at the top of the list.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Lots of works and composers missing of course, but really great to see a well-informed survey & article in a general magazine.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Becca said:


> While I appreciate that no 20th century symphonic overview can cover everything, I still find it amazing that when Ross manages to talk about Rubbra, Martinu and Tubin amongst others, he makes no reference whatsoever to Ralph Vaughan Williams.


He did mention him in his list of composers not mentioned on his blog.

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2015/08/symphonies-galore.html


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## Guest (Sep 1, 2015)

KenOC said:


> He talks (briefly) about quite a few composers and gives some impressions, often superficial of course.


I don't understand poisoning the well you're inviting us to drink from.


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## Guest (Sep 1, 2015)

"The Symphony Survives"

As it was not meant as an overview of the symphony, but a consideration of how it has survived, it seems unreasonable to expect him to name check everyone who wrote one.

What the article doesn't seem to address is the question that it prompts: what is a symphony, and if Haydn would have scoffed at Sibelius 7th, how can we justify the label for one which lasts 16 seconds?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Indeed, what is a "symphony"? There have been plenty of symphonies from Alkan forward that stretch any definition beyond reasonable bounds, and many other works that are clearly symphonies but that the composers have not so named. Maybe the name "symphony" is meaningless.


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## GioCar (Oct 30, 2013)

Instead of putting "etc etc" at the end of his long (and quite pretentious) list of symphonists on his blog, I'd have put the name of Stravinsky...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Symphony, _n._: "a not too short piece in one or more movements for a not too small combination of instruments in which one or more thematic ideas is developed in some manner, and which, unlike the baroque _sinfonia_, is not attached to a longer work such as an opera or cantata."

Or, as Barthes would say, "a social construct."


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## Guest (Sep 1, 2015)

The symphony continued to be a thing that more traditional avant gardists did. While Schoenberg did none, and Webern and Zimmermann only one each, Wellesz did nine, Krenek did five, Searle did five, Sessions did nine, Toch did four, and a host of lesser known folks did several each, some of them picked up by the Musik in Deutschland series, which was an ambitious recording effort to chronicle musical activity in German from (mostly) 1950 to 2000. Not music by Germans, solely, but music by whomever, performed in Germany.

But on the experimental side of things, along with more exploratory new music people, like Lachenmann and Mark Andre, there are hardly any symphonies at all, so called or otherwise. There's a long percussion solo by Z'ev that's called "Symphony #2," and there's a thing by Dhomont called "Frankenstein Symphony," which is in four movements with traditional nomenclature, Allegro, Andante, Scherzo (giocoso), and Finale, but which musically consists of snippets of electroacoustic music by several of Dhomont's students and by Dhomont himself, cut up and reassembled to make this piece. (So the reference is clearly to the film not the novel.)

Otherwise, the more exploratory composers generally did not (and do not) do symphonies or concertos or masses or serenades or any of those kinds of things. Generally, each piece is itself and nothing else. Oddly enough, the word opera continues to be used by quite a number of exploratory composers to describe some of their theatrical pieces. Azguime, Means, and Ashley have all done things they called operas, as has Lachenmann and Cage.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Contemporary composer Leif Segerstam has composed 250 symphonies (so far). So here is one contemporary composer keeping this old genre much alive.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

As Ross's article points out, Segerstam is up to 286.


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## Guest (Sep 2, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> Contemporary composer Leif Segerstam has composed 250 symphonies (so far). So here is one contemporary composer keeping this old genre much alive.





KenOC said:


> As Ross's article points out, Segerstam is up to 286.


The actual number is less relevant than whether what he has composed is any good, and whether any of them are 'recognisably' symphonies. I know we've been round this one already, but if the only qualification is that the composer declares a composition 'symphony', then we're all wasting our time admiring the form.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

KenOC said:


> As Ross's article points out, Segerstam is up to 286.


This must make Segerstam the greatest contemporary symphony composer based on sheer number alone! 286 my oh my!


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## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

Ross' omission of RVW from the list is not surprising - his book said very little about him at all.


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## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> This must make Segerstam the greatest contemporary symphony composer based on sheer number alone! 286 my oh my!


Are any of them any good??


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Only a handful of his symphonies have been recorded at this point. The ones I've heard are not particularly "symphonic", but then we have to consider to what extent the descriptor is tied up with the romantic symphony. Surely, any given form cannot remain precisely the same for hundreds of years. How then do we define "symphony" for the 21st century?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

manyene said:


> Ross' omission of RVW from the list is not surprising - his book said very little about him at all.


This is probably because he would mostly have been reiterating what he said in other contexts. He discussed the influence of folk music with Bartok and the continued traditional writing of Sibelius. Adding in the fact that Britten is one of Ross's favorite composers and partially for that reason ends up representing the UK, and there's not much room for Vaughan Williams left in terms of unique ground to cover in a non-comprehensive survey.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

ArtMusic said:


> This must make Segerstam the greatest contemporary symphony composer based on sheer number alone! 286 my oh my!


The largely unknown Rowan Taylor reached 265 symphonies, but died back in 2005
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=72149791

Some other unknown relatively recent composers with a bulk of symphonies include Derek Bourgeois (1941- ; at least 75) and Erik Fordell (+1981; 44). Sergei Slonimsky is interesting and has written at least 35, a bunch of them recorded.

(There may be some early classical composers who were also prolific on a similar scale ... Molter wrote around 170, Dittersdorf around 120 - 150, Graupner 115 (?), Vanhal 100, Stamitz 80 (?), Sammartini wrote around 77, Cannabich 75, etc.)


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Crudblud said:


> Only a handful of his symphonies have been recorded at this point. The ones I've heard are not particularly "symphonic", but then we have to consider to what extent the descriptor is tied up with the romantic symphony. Surely, any given form cannot remain precisely the same for hundreds of years. How then do we define "symphony" for the 21st century?


We probably don't define it for the 21st century but as long as the composer says it is so. Isn't that the avantgarde idiom? In any case his symphonies employ an orchestra and maybe he is pushing the boundaries for innovation as per modernism. That's what I think.


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## Guest (Sep 2, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> We probably don't define it for the 21st century but as long as the composer says it is so. Isn't that the avantgarde idiom?


Um, no?



ArtMusic said:


> In any case his symphonies employ an orchestra and maybe he is pushing the boundaries for innovation as per modernism. That's what I think.


On what basis do you think this? Have you listened to any of Segerstam's symphonies?

In any case, operas and ballets and concertos and serenades and requiems employ orchestras as well. The point being?


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

ArtMusic said:


> We probably don't define it for the 21st century but as long as the composer says it is so. Isn't that the avantgarde idiom? In any case his symphonies employ an orchestra and maybe he is pushing the boundaries for innovation as per modernism. That's what I think.


I don't know what "the avantgarde idiom" is, so I can't answer that question. Perhaps you could elaborate on that?


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## Polyphemus (Nov 2, 2011)

Ross mentions the lack of performances of Robert Simpson Symphonies. I can only recall one in Dublin way back in 1991 with the composer present in the audience. Simpson was living in County Kerry then. 
John Carewe conducted in place of the advertised Vernon Handley who was indisposed.
Simpson came on stage after the performance to a standing ovation, well deserved.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Crudblud said:


> I don't know what "the avantgarde idiom" is, so I can't answer that question. Perhaps you could elaborate on that?


My definition of the avant-garde idiom is the composer is absolutely free without any restriction whatsoever to composer in any way (new or not), using any means whatsoever. So if Segerstam declares 286 symphonies, then so be it, he has written that many even if these may be highly unconventional in the classical sense. He may be trying to innovate the symphonic genre.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

some guy said:


> Um, no?
> 
> On what basis do you think this? Have you listened to any of Segerstam's symphonies?
> 
> In any case, operas and ballets and concertos and serenades and requiems employ orchestras as well. The point being?


Yes, a contemporary composer can declare within his or her artistic creativity that a piece is a symphony. Segerstam has 286, so who are we to question that? (John Cage declared silence is music, too by analogy). So the fact remains that the avant-garde idiom does not restrict composers in a classical sense. This is the core principle. And I think Segerstam is pushing the boundaries with the contemporary symphony. It was only forty years ago since the great Shoatakovich wrote his last symphonies based on more traditional symphonic models but forty years can be a long time in classical music history so I wouldn't be so surprised to see a contemporary composer Segerstam pushing to boundaries with the symphony. I have not listened to all 286.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> My definition of the avant-garde idiom is the composer is absolutely free without any restriction whatsoever to composer in any way (new or not), using any means whatsoever. So if Segerstam declares 286 symphonies, then so be it, he has written that many even if these may be highly unconventional in the classical sense. He may be trying to innovate the symphonic genre.


The fact that someone calls them a symphony is all that counts? OK, I'm going to get busy on my first 50 tonight and I should be up to 286 by the weekend. And yes, they will be (very) unconventional but (incredibly) innovative.

Needless to say I find that type of definition to be utterly meaningless.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

ArtMusic said:


> My definition of the avant-garde idiom is the composer is absolutely free without any restriction whatsoever to composer in any way (new or not), using any means whatsoever. So if Segerstam declares 286 symphonies, then so be it, he has written that many even if these may be highly unconventional in the classical sense. He may be trying to innovate the symphonic genre.


Okay. I don't know if that's accurate in terms of what's actually going on in the avant garde presently or even in the past twenty years or so, but as far as your argument goes the internal logic holds up.


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## Tedski (Jul 8, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> So if Segerstam declares 286 symphonies, then so be it, he has written that many even if these may be highly unconventional in the classical sense.


And, then, language as a communicative device is meaningless and defunct. We should all just jabber away in our own nonsensical vocalisings.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

The definition of "symphony" is so broad now. It seems whatever the composer calls "symphony" is thus a symphony, whether the piece is four minutes or four hours long.

I didn't learn too much from this article, but Alex Ross doesn't necessarily write for the already well initiated, instead his audience might not know much about 20th and 21st century music. 

But my take away is the following: I now want to hear 
Rubbra's 4th
Tubin's 5th
Nielsen's 4th
Schuman's 8th
Martinu's 3rd


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

senza sordino said:


> The definition of "symphony" is so broad now. It seems whatever the composer calls "symphony" is thus a symphony, whether the piece is four minutes or four hours long.
> 
> I didn't learn too much from this article, but Alex Ross doesn't necessarily write for the already well initiated, instead his audience might not know much about 20th and 21st century music.
> 
> ...


All worth hearing, but of these composers, I would start with...

Rubbra: 5th
Nielsen: 5th
Martinu: 2nd
Tubin: 4th


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Tedski said:


> And, then, language as a communicative device is meaningless and defunct. We should all just jabber away in our own nonsensical vocalisings.


Yes, I agree. Which may well raise questions about why Segerstam wrote so many symphonies and what value these pieces have as they are so very unknown.


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## Alfacharger (Dec 6, 2013)

manyene said:


> Ross' omission of RVW from the list is not surprising - his book said very little about him at all.


He did mention Vaughan Williams in a blog entry comparing his music to Sibelius.

Quote below.

"There is a distinguished retinue of twentieth-century British symphonists, beginning with the Edwardian giant Edward Elgar and proceeding through Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton, Arnold Bax, Michael Tippett, William Alwyn, Edmund Rubbra, and Havergal Brian to latter-day practitioners such as Robert Simpson, Peter Maxwell Davies, and David Matthews. Vaughan Williams is particularly close to Sibelius in spirit; the final movement of his Sixth Symphony breathes the same otherworldly air as Sibelius's late music, and, as it happens, was inspired by Shakespeare's Tempest (in particular, Prospero's line "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep"):"

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2007/01/chapter-5-appar.html


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

ArtMusic said:


> Yes, I agree. Which may well raise questions about why Segerstam wrote so many symphonies and what value these pieces have as they are so very unknown.


He wrote so many symphonies because he wanted to. Listen to them yourself and make your own decision of their value. Some like them some like them not. Of those i have heard i like some more and some less. He seems to be an energic and enthusiastic man.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

I have listened to two of his symphonies and they were energetic as you wrote. I find that composers who write a large quantity of a particular genre tends to show their artistic development quite clearly over the period of time. So maybe there is something we can learn from his large oeuvre, just like Haydn's path over his 100+ symphonies.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Segerstam is thoughtful in providing names for some of his symphonies. An Ondine recording has three:

No. 81, "After eighty..." Makes sense, and seems to have something to do with Bergen.

No. 162, "Doubling the number from Bergen!"

No. 181, "Names itself when played... = (raising the number 100 for Bergen)."

Uh...OK. All played by the Bergen Philharmonic, of course.


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## Guest (Sep 3, 2015)

ArtMusic, I would like to request that you not pronounce on what is or is not an avant garde idiom.

You do not listen to avant garde music. You do not even approve of avant garde music, though occasionally you give lip service to it. What the lip service is in service of is anyone's guess.

Wait until you know, por favor, before you opine. Please.

I have been listening to and enjoying contemporary music for over forty years. I have taken it upon myself to write about it extensively by attending concerts and festivals of new music in Europe and North America and posting views and reviews in an online magazine. I hope to get to some of the events in South America, Asia, and Oceania if I can ever afford it. I know dozens of contemporary composers personally, and have had many conversations with them about new music. Though, as they are friends, we do tend to talk about other things, like which are the best Irish pubs in Barcelona and how much we rely on falafel joints when we're in Germany. That and football, of course.

With that in mind, know that I have been reading your posts here at TC in which you mention "avant garde" music, and nothing you have ever said about any of it has matched in any way any of my experience with the same.

So please, learn, understand, appreciate. Then opine. S'il voux plait.


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## Guest (Sep 3, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> Yes, a contemporary composer can declare *within his or her artistic creativity* that a piece is a symphony.


No, s/he can't, without risking complete devaluation of the term - and this phrase is insufficient justification.



ArtMusic said:


> And I think Segerstam is pushing the boundaries with the contemporary symphony.


In what way?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Yes, *any contemporary composer* can declare a symphony is a symphony (of course, listeners do not have to agree just like John Cage declaring _4'33"_ is music etc. but that is a different topic). This is the avant-garde idiom. The composer may well risk devaluation or whatever else but that has always been a risk contemporary avant-garde composer take with more extreme innovations. Taking risk and pushing boundaries. I think Segerstam is pushing the boundaries by making many of these symphonies a one movement work and writing variations of each but still considering them as separate. I do listen (not as extensively as I do earlier periods) and I do read.


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

> *ArtMusic:*Yes, a contemporary composer can declare within his or her artistic creativity that a piece is a symphony.





MacLeod said:


> No, s/he can't, without risking complete devaluation of the term...


But how do we decide if the term is "completely devalued" by a composer naming a piece "symphony"?

Take Sibelius' 7th. Shostakovich's 14th. Berio's Sinfonia. Gorecki's 3rd. Perhaps even Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, or Webern's Symphony.

I would venture to guess that all of these works, before actually being given the title of "symphony", could quite easily have been called something else. And perhaps all of these works may contain elements that would have made them appear contrary to symphonic writing up to that point.

Yet they were all labelled with that term, and we don't have any problems with it. So why should we have problems in other cases, with maybe "lesser known" composers, who may be trying simply to push the meaning of the term out farther as all those other composers intended to?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Exactly so, I agree. What about Krzysztof Penderecki's 8th symphony (2005, revised 2008)? A twelve movement work scored for chorus and symphony orchestra. Might this be a new sub-genre because of innovation? *A choral-symphonic-poem?* This is the contemporary idiom. My point all along.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._8_(Penderecki)


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## Guest (Sep 3, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> A twelve movement work scored for chorus and symphony orchestra. Might this be a new sub-genre because of innovation? *A choral-symphonic-poem?* This is the contemporary idiom.


How about a seven movement work for chorus and soloists and symphony orchestra, which is called a symphony. There's one of those from almost a hundred and eighty years ago. Might this be a new sub-genre because of innovation? That is, new in 1839, when it was premiered. Not new any more.

Neither innovation in form nor stretching the boundaries of nomenclature are characteristic of "the contemporary idiom," as they've been around for hundreds of years.

Not to mention.


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## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

Or, if you are Michael Nyman you can start your sequence with 2,4 or 11. Next up, 279, or even 1001.


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## The Member Who Forgot (Sep 2, 2015)

KenOC said:


> Indeed, what is a "symphony"? There have been plenty of symphonies from Alkan forward that stretch any definition beyond reasonable bounds, and many other works that are clearly symphonies but that the composers have not so named. Maybe the name "symphony" is meaningless.


That's a very interesting question. What is a symphony?
What about 'Tales From Topographic Oceans'?
Has anyone made the rule that a symphony has to be played upon certain instruments?


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## The Member Who Forgot (Sep 2, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Symphony, _n._: "a not too short piece in one or more movements for a not too small combination of instruments in which one or more thematic ideas is developed in some manner, and which, unlike the baroque _sinfonia_, is not attached to a longer work such as an opera or cantata."
> 
> Or, as Barthes would say, "a social construct."


That could be said of 'Supper's Ready'!!!


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## Guest (Sep 3, 2015)

Skilmarilion said:


> But how do we decide if the term is "completely devalued" by a composer naming a piece "symphony"?


Not by accepting anything any old composer offers under the name 'symphony'; or, not minding about the term 'symphony' at all. What we don't do is simultaneously define what a symphony is (eg 'a genre established by the early romantic period') and then accept variations that resemble nothing like an early romantic symphony.



Skilmarilion said:


> Take Sibelius' 7th. Shostakovich's 14th. Berio's Sinfonia. Gorecki's 3rd. Perhaps even Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, or Webern's Symphony.
> 
> I would venture to guess that all of these works, before actually being given the title of "symphony", could quite easily have been called something else. And perhaps all of these works may contain elements that would have made them appear contrary to symphonic writing up to that point.
> 
> Yet they were all labelled with that term, and we don't have any problems with it.


Who says we don't have problems with it? I do.



Skilmarilion said:


> So why should we have problems in other cases, with maybe "lesser known" composers, who may be trying simply to push the meaning of the term out farther as all those other composers intended to?


Well, obviously, in the scheme of things, my 'problem with it' is unlikely to count - I'm 'just' a consumer, and in any case, Sibelius' 7th was written far too long ago for my voice to carry any weight.

But just to be clear. Whatever the merit of any of this music as music, I'm not about to concede that I have to accept as a symphony, anything that a composer wishes to call a symphony.


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## Tedski (Jul 8, 2015)

Anecdote about Abraham Lincoln, who said, "How many legs does a dog have, if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg."


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

some guy said:


> How about a seven movement work for chorus and soloists and symphony orchestra, which is called a symphony. There's one of those from almost a hundred and eighty years ago. Might this be a new sub-genre because of innovation? That is, new in 1839, when it was premiered. Not new any more.
> 
> Neither innovation in form nor stretching the boundaries of nomenclature are characteristic of "the contemporary idiom," as they've been around for hundreds of years.
> 
> Not to mention.


I disagree, I see this as full attempt at innovation to further develop the choral symphonic genre as a modern, contemporary one. Choral symphonies written this century and the last are far and few between so it is very refreshing to hear one written only ten years ago (and revised significantly). *Not to mention Penderecki is a respected and recognized contemporary composer.*


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> Who says we don't have problems with it? I do.


That is exactly my second part of my argument, which is *the listeners can disagree* with whether a new symphony is really a symphony or not. The composer however was and is absolutely free to declare a new piece is one, as per the innumerable tens of thousands of examples before us today (well established by early Romantic period, of course). This simply states the two way listening deal between listener and composer for a piece to be truly accepted as symphony over time.


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> *Not to mention Penderecki is a respected and recognized contemporary composer.*


How is this part of your argument? Are you saying that because he is a respected composer, we should accept his use of the term, and that because he is contemporary, we should accept his right to offer a revision to what 'symphony' might include?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

MacLeod said:


> How is this part of your argument? Are you saying that because he is a respected composer, we should accept his use of the term, and that because he is contemporary, we should accept his right to offer a revision to what 'symphony' might include?


I wrote very clearly above. The listener can decide for himself whether or not to accept a symphony is one or not. Penderecki is a well respected contemporary composer and therefore chances are over time, his symphonies will be recognized as such, just like Mozart or Bruckner or Shostakovich. The individual listener however can take it or leave it. Pure and simple.


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

Skilmarilion said:


> Take Sibelius' 7th. Shostakovich's 14th. Berio's Sinfonia. Gorecki's 3rd. Perhaps even Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, or Webern's Symphony.
> 
> I would venture to guess that all of these works, before actually being given the title of "symphony", could quite easily have been called something else. And perhaps all of these works may contain elements that would have made them appear contrary to symphonic writing up to that point.
> 
> Yet they were all labelled with that term, and we don't have any problems with it. So why should we have problems in other cases, with maybe "lesser known" composers, who may be trying simply to push the meaning of the term out farther as all those other composers intended to?





MacLeod said:


> Who says we don't have problems with it? I do.


Why? What are these problems in your eyes?



MacLeod said:


> But just to be clear. Whatever the merit of any of this music as music, I'm not about to concede that I have to accept as a symphony, anything that a composer wishes to call a symphony.


Well it is quite possible to not accept a work as a symphony, and yet if the composer does label it "symphony" ... how can it be anything other than a symphony?

There are no strict definitions, as far as I can see, when it comes to something like this. Only traditions. And traditions are there to be "broken", aren't they? Otherwise Beethoven's 9th, for having a choral finale, may as well have been rejected as a symphony in 1824.


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2015)

Isn't it simply a label that may be chosen by the composer where a work involves a larger, rather than smaller, number of performers?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

dogen said:


> Isn't it simply a label that may be chosen by the composer where a work involves a larger, rather than smaller, number of performers?


That's a good working definition in practice. I agree.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

It is worth reading Robert Simpson's discussion about what a symphony is and is not in the introductions to his two volumes of _The Symphony_. As Simpson was a very well respected musicologist, author AND composer of symphonies, his opinions should be worth considering.

Here is a link to the section reproduced in Google Books...


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

dogen said:


> Isn't it simply a label that may be chosen by the composer where a work involves a larger, rather than smaller, number of performers?


Except for works like "Symphony for Solo Piano" and "Organ Symphony"...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

We will always disagree about what works should be called by what names. There's nothing to stop any composer from calling a piece a symphony and nothing to stop us from thinking he's stretching the term too far. But I have a suspicion that in most cases a composer using the term wants us to keep a certain idea of a symphony - something not too far from the Classical idea - in mind as we consider the ways in which his work resembles or differs from that idea. A work called a "symphony" may thus be a sort of "comment" on the idea of a symphony - a sort of "meta-symphony." Some examples might even be intended as ironic or humorous. Some might also be references to the etymology of the word - "sounding together." I can even (unfortunately) imagine a completely aleatoric work being called "symphony" by having the performers draw names out of a coffee can before playing whatever they think a piece by that name should sound like.

Most artists don't use these terms arbitrarily, but if they seem to we can always show our contempt by shunning them - or our curiosity by considering what their work might have to say about the symphony as we understand it.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> WI can even (unfortunately) imagine a completely aleatoric work being called "symphony" by having the performers draw names out of a coffee can before playing whatever they think a piece by that name should sound like.
> .


Now that would really be a social construct but please, you don't need to give them ideas!


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## Guest (Sep 5, 2015)

Skilmarilion said:


> Why? What are these problems in your eyes?


I thought I'd already explained 'the problem, at the bottom of the post from which you quote. I don't care whether the composer is famous or lesser-known. When it comes to the names of their works, I don't accept that _we _can simultaneously offer a definition of 'symphony' and then accept a work that doesn't fit that definition, simply because a composer - great or small - chooses to name it that way.

As yet, no one has offered a definition of 'symphony' that satisfies all pieces that lay claim to the name except that it is so broad and vague that it suffices for many pieces that don't (lay such a claim).



Skilmarilion said:


> Well it is quite possible to not accept a work as a symphony, and yet if the composer does label it "symphony" ... how can it be anything other than a symphony?
> 
> There are no strict definitions, as far as I can see


Then why call it a symphony? What is the use of a term that has no definition?

We seem to think that the composer is god (especially if he's a Famous Gentleman Already) - he has no flaws in his thinking; he is the creator of his work; he is entitled to call his work anything he likes and we must assent. ArtMusic tells us that we can disagree, but that if that is the name of the work, then it must be so (the 'tail of the dog' argument). You appear to agree with him that if it is named so, it must be so. You both appear to be satisfied with the idea that this is especially the case if the symphonist is already well-known (though ArtMusic only restates his claim when I ask him to explain it, he gives no reasons or evidence) or that because we've 'accepted' the symphonies of the well-known, we must also accept the symphonies of the lesser-known.

For me, the degree of fame or public acceptance is irrelevant to the argument.


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## Guest (Sep 5, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> Except for works like "Symphony for Solo Piano" and "Organ Symphony"...


OK! 
So is my suggestion off-base or are such works you cite exceptions to the rule?

(Or do composers not agree universally on when the title may be appropriate?)


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

W i t t g e n s t e i n


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## Guest (Sep 5, 2015)

Becca said:


> It is worth reading Robert Simpson's discussion about what a symphony is and is not in the introductions to his two volumes of _The Symphony_. As Simpson was a very well respected musicologist, author AND composer of symphonies, his opinions should be worth considering.
> 
> Here is a link to the section reproduced in Google Books...


Thanks Becca. An interesting read, and his point about bats and birds is amusing. Admirably, Simpson declares his definition, and then sees what fits, instead of looking at a range of symphonies and trying to find their common elements (see what he says about Stravinsky's symphonies, for example). He is unwilling to admit any old piece to the hallowed halls of the symphony, and notes in any case that we may see how the composer may have used the term ironically.

He loses me, however, at the point where he says (pompously, in my opinion) that 'history commands us to insist' that the symphony is the highest type of orchestral music. History may insist, but we must not accept the implication, that there is some hierarchy of musical form which the composers of a certain period or tradition (or mindset) have laid out for us all to worship.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

dogen said:


> (Or do composers not agree universally on when the title may be appropriate?)


I don't think composers, or listeners, or musicologists, or anybody else agree on what a symphony is or is not. I don't even agree with myself.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

dogen said:


> OK!
> So is my suggestion off-base or are such works you cite exceptions to the rule?
> 
> (Or do composers not agree universally on when the title may be appropriate?)


I would say they're exceptions to a rule that a "Symphony" is generally a work for orchestra. I'd agree with the rule, but I'd say there are more fundamental factors that make a work truly symphonic and allow us to say that this or that work has those elements without being for orchestra.


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## Guest (Sep 5, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> I would say they're exceptions to a rule that a "Symphony" is generally a work for orchestra. I'd agree with the rule, but I'd say there are more fundamental factors that make a work truly symphonic and allow us to say that this or that work has those elements without being for orchestra.


OK and could you say what those factors are? (that a pleb like me may understand!)


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

dogen said:


> OK and could you say what those factors are? (that a pleb like me may understand!)


Developmental treatment of ideas across either a multi-movement span or a single movement that incorporates elements of different kinds of movements.

Also, a process of harmonic departure and return, modulating at the least to the dominant and back, throughout every movement.


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## Guest (Sep 5, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> Developmental treatment of ideas across either a multi-movement span or a single movement that incorporates elements of different kinds of movements.
> 
> Also, a process of harmonic departure and return, modulating at the least to the dominant and back, throughout every movement.


OK thanks. In your opinion and experience do you think any works that are titled "symphony" are not actually symphonies? (Ignoring any meant ironically)


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

dogen said:


> OK thanks. In your opinion and experience do you think any works that are titled "symphony" are not actually symphonies? (Ignoring any meant ironically)


Shostakovich's Second, perhaps? It's an interesting work, but not particularly symphonic in construction. Mendelssohn's Lobgesang is also rather sectional and oddly put-together.

I agree that Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms is also not particularly symphonic in character, though it's certainly a fine work. Messiaen's Turangalila is an odd hybrid. Parts of it are symphonic, parts are not. It's awkward in part because Messiaen was never really a developmental composer.


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## Guest (Sep 5, 2015)

Thanks. No further questions, Your Honour.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> Shostakovich's Second, perhaps? It's an interesting work, but not particularly symphonic in construction. Mendelssohn's Lobgesang is also rather sectional and oddly put-together.
> 
> I agree that Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms is also not particularly symphonic in character, though it's certainly a fine work. Messiaen's Turangalila is an odd hybrid. Parts of it are symphonic, parts are not. It's awkward in part because Messiaen was never really a developmental composer.


And in the other direction, there are works which are essentially symphonies in all but name, i.e. Sibelius' _Tapiola_
I am not quite sure how one would fit Mahler's _Das Lied von der Erde_ into all this and will leave it to our resident Mahlerian


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## Skilmarilion (Apr 6, 2013)

Maxwell Davies, who wrote his Tenth last year, on "what a symphony is":

3:07 to 4:14


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## Dim7 (Apr 24, 2009)

Now that's the vaguest definition of symphony I've ever heard....


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