Symphony Grove Music Online

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Symphony (Fr. simphonie, symphonie; Ger.

Sinfonie, Symphonie; It. sinfonia)
Jan Larue, Eugene K. Wolf, Mark Evan Bonds, Stephen Walsh
and Charles Wilson
https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.27254
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001
updated, 27 April 2006
A term now normally taken to signify an extended work for

orchestra. The symphony became the chief vehicle of orchestral
music in the late 18th century, and from the time of Beethoven came
to be regarded as its highest and most exalted form. The adjective
‘symphonic’ applied to a work implies that it is extended and
thoroughly developed.
The word ‘symphony’ derives from the Greek syn (‘together’) and
phōnē (‘sounding’), through the Latin Symphonia, a term used
during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is essentially in this
derivation that the term was used by Giovanni Gabrieli (Sacrae
symphoniae, 1597), Heinrich Schütz (Symphoniae sacrae, 1629) and
others for concerted motets, usually for voices and instruments. In
the 17th century the term ‘symphony’ or (more commonly) ‘sinfonia’
was applied to introductory movements to operas, oratorios and
cantatas (see Overture), to the instrumental introductions and
ritornellos of arias and ensembles (see Ritornello), and to ensemble
works that could be classified as sonatas or concertos. The common
factor in this variety of usage was that sinfonias or symphonies were
usually part of a larger framework, such as another composition, an
‘academy’ or a ‘church service. (For a fuller discussion see Sinfonia.)
The immediate antecedent of the modern symphony is commonly

considered to be the opera sinfonia, which by the early 18th century
had a standard structure of three sections or movements: fast, slow,
and fast dance-like movement. That form was extensively used by
Alessandro Scarlatti and his contemporaries and was widely adopted
outside Italy, particularly in Germany and England (less in France,
where the French overture held sway). The terms ‘overture’ and
‘symphony or ‘sinfonia’ were widely regarded as interchangeable for
much of the 18th century.
I. 18th century
Jan Larue, revised by Eugene K. Wolf
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1. Introduction.
To understand the development of the Classical style there is no
better exercise than to follow the long evolution of the 18th-century
symphony. Firstly, the symphony was cultivated with extraordinary
intensity throughout most of the century: the Catalogue of 18th-
Century Symphonies (see LaRue, 1959, 1988) contains over 13,000
distinct works. In Europe at the time there was hardly a princely,
ecclesiastical, civic or even private musical establishment that did
not possess a stock of symphonies. Valuable collections have been
discovered from Finland to Sicily and from Kiev to Salem, North
Carolina. The leading area of symphonic production was no doubt
Vienna and the rest of the Habsburg Monarchy, followed by
Germany, Italy, France and England; but significant activity also took
place in the Low Countries, Scandinavia, Spain, Poland and Russia. A
second important aspect is the continuity of the symphony’s
development, beginning in the late 17th century with the skeletal
necesssities of instrumentation, texture and tempo contrast and
leading ultimately to the balanced array of procedures that
epitomize the Classical style. Finally, the characteristically large-
scale, public nature of the symphony, together with the fact that it
did not depend on soloistic virtuosity to achieve its effect, gave it a
weight and significance that seemed to call for a composer’s best
efforts. The increasingly prominent position accorded the symphony
during the 18th century appears tangibly in both the importance it
occupies in publishers’ catalogues and the conspicuous role it plays
in writings of the time, including those of Scheibe, Riepel, Burney,
Schulz, Koch and many others.
2. Social aspects.
The symphony pervaded a broad spectrum of 18th-century life. It
provided an important element of state, civic and institutional
functions, from installations and other official ceremonies to
banquets and receptions. Symphonies were also a standard
component of Catholic church services, the usual practice being to
distribute the various movements throughout the Mass as
substitutes or accompaniments to items of the Proper such as the
gradual, offertory and communion (Zaslaw, 1982).
The most characteristic use of the symphony, however, was as part of

one of the varied types of occasions we lump together under the
rubric ‘concerts’. One type of concert was the ‘academy’ or private
concert in a palace, monastery or private residence. In contrast to
the later image of the concert as a primarily aesthetic experience,
aristocratic academies generally featured tea and card-playing, and
descriptions of the time make clear that there was much moving
about and conversation as a counterpoint to the music: Spohr recalls
in his autobiography that as late as 1799 the Duchess of Brunswick
insisted that the orchestra always play softly when she was present
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so that the card-playing should not be disturbed. Of burgeoning
importance throughout the century was the public concert, ranging
from ale- and coffee-house concerts and the many amateur series to
the formal subscription and benefit concerts common in the second
half of the century.
Whether it was a private academy or a public concert, the principal

fare of such occasions during the period was nearly always music
that featured soloists, both instrumental and vocal. Programmes of
the time show that the most common role of the symphony was to
open the concert, an introductory function not unlike that of an
overture. Either another symphony or one movement of the opening
symphony might then close the programme. The growing prestige
and aesthetic significance of the symphony in the course of the
century may be seen in the prominence given to Haydn’s latest
productions during both his London stays: whereas a symphony (still
known in England as an overture) by another composer would most
often begin the concert, Haydn’s newest work was usually placed at
the start of the second half, where it would presumably receive
greater attention – and not suffer from, or be missed by, latecomers.
3. Sources.
The enormous number of 18th-century symphonies mentioned above
obviously implies an even more enormous number of sources. A well-
known symphony by Pleyel, for example, may be found in as many as
50 libraries, and its popularity extended even to remote locations;
for instance, the records of the Philharmonic Society of Breslau (now
Wrocław) show performances of Pleyel’s op.30 extending to 1833.
Copies of symphonies by Gossec and van Maldere appear in
provincial church archives in lower Slovakia; many Italian overtures
found their way into Russian libraries; and a Russian symphony/
overture by Berezovs′ky is extant in the Doria-Pamphili collection in
Rome.
Symphonies during the 18th century were usually transmitted in

parts rather than score, and manuscripts were much more common
than prints. The copying of manuscripts was a standard obligation of
musicians at courts, monasteries and other institutions. In addition,
manuscripts could be obtained commercially from such copying
shops as the well-known ones of Vienna. Firms such as Breitkopf in
Leipzig and Ringmacher in Berlin (see Brook, 1966, 1987) even
issued incipit catalogues from which one could obtain manuscript
copies (though Breitkopf offered more and more prints for sale over
the years). After about 1750 the symphony became so popular that
publishers in Paris, Amsterdam and London issued them on a
periodic basis, as in Robert Bremner’s famous series ‘The Periodical
Overture in 8 Parts’, begun in 1763 and intended ‘To be continued
monthly’; such publications were especially popular with amateur
music societies and for domestic use. It should also be noted that
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neither prints nor manuscripts of the 18th century normally bear
dates, so that determination of chronology typically rests on
circumstantial evidence alone.
Symphonies in the 18th century appear under a large number of

different titles in addition to ‘sinfonia’ and its cognates, such as
overture (also introduzione, intrada, prelude), sonata, trio, quartet
or quadro, quintet, concerto, concertino, parthia, divertimento,
cassation, serenade and pastorale. Thus, to identify them according
to a ‘semantic principle’ (such as that adopted by W.S. Newman in
his books on the sonata, i.e. to include only works bearing some form
of the title ‘sinfonia’) would result in a skewed and highly incomplete
survey. A related question of ‘when is a work a symphony?’ arises
with regard to the use of operatic overtures as concert symphonies,
a practice that reached its peak about 1760 and then tapered off as
the stylistic distinction between the two genres became clearer. In
general, the present survey will take account of overtures only when
necessary for contextual purposes, as when they provided important
models or avenues of innovation for the symphony proper.
Two final problems with symphony sources concern anonymous

works and misattributions. The widespread problem of non-
attribution has plagued librarians since the inception of the
symphony; it may result from loss of the cover page carrying the
attribution, from carelessness on the part of a copyist or librarian, or
from myriad other causes. A majority of anonymous symphonies can
be linked to a composer by use of the ‘Thematic Identifier’ volume of
the Catalogue of 18th-Century Symphonies (LaRue, 1988) or, when it
is completed, RISM, but a frustratingly high percentage represents
unique sources for which no attribution has been discovered.
Regarding misattributions, while frauds relating to Haydn may

receive the widest publicity, equally severe problems affect countless
composers of less importance and may lead to equally severe
misunderstandings of their output and style. Such mistakes can
occur under the best of auspices, as shown by the publication in a
respected monumental edition (DTÖ, xxxi, Jg.xv/2) of a symphony in
an obviously later Classical style under the name of the early
Viennese composer M.G. Monn (1717–50). This work had troubled
three generations of writers attempting to explain the Viennese
symphony, for stylistially it did not fit at all with the modest
instrumentation, figural melodic style and short phrase-lengths of
Monn’s other symphonies. But use of the ‘Thematic Identifier’
revealed that it was in fact a later work by F.X. Pokorny of
Regensburg, and study of the manuscript itself showed that the
attribution to him had been erased and changed to Monn.
Misattributions of this sort affect about 7% of 18th-century
symphonies. Though the Thematic Identifier (and eventually RISM)
can bring such conflicts to the surface, the task of determining the
correct composer may still be almost insoluble; there are several
symphonies attributed to no fewer than five different composers.
Page 4 of 94
4. Instrumentation.
The earliest concert symphonies are scored for an orchestra of
strings alone, with harpsichord and often bassoon assumed as part
of the continuo group. Though four parts are the norm (two violins,
viola and bass, the latter comprising at least cello and double bass),
trio-symphonies for two violins and bass are quite common in the
early phases of the symphony. Symphonies a 4 continue to be
cultivated until late in the century, especially by composers working
at smaller provincial centres but also under special circumstances by
such well-known figures as C.P.E Bach, whose six symphonies for
string orchestra of 1773 were written for Gottfried van Swieten.
Beginning about 1730 one begins to find symphonies a 6 for strings

and a pair of horns or (less often) oboes, and slightly later the
standard a 8 overture instrumentation of strings plus a pair of oboes
and a pair of horns. The latter combination should be regarded as
the standard orchestra for the symphony from c1740 to
approximately the 1770s. Horns could be replaced by or augmented
by pairs of trumpets and timpani. Similarly, oboes could be replaced
by flutes, either for the entire symphony or for the slow movement
alone. Bassoons increasingly took on a more concertante role, and
clarinets began to make their appearance in symphonies in the
1750s. However, the expansion of the orchestra to full late Classical
size (strings plus two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons,
horns, trumpets and timpani, with harpsichord often assumed even
with this large a group) was erratic rather than consistent, and the
whole development is closely linked to local contingencies. For
instance, the best-known early example of this instrumentation,
Mozart’s Symphony K297 of 1778, was written for the large
orchestra of the Concert Spirituel in Paris.
5. Key, form.
The great majority of 18th-century symphonies are in a major key,
only rarely going beyond four sharps or three flats. Only about 7–8%
of these works are in the minor, though as we shall see, certain
composers of the period evinced a special fondness for it. With
respect to large-scale form, the fast–slow–fast (or fast–slow–
moderate) movement sequence familiar from the Baroque concerto
and overture furnished the basic pattern for the early symphony, and
it continued to appear prominently throughout the period, especially
outside the Viennese sphere of influence. Second movements of
early symphonies are generally in the relative or tonic minor, the
dominant, or the tonic, with the subdominant coming to the fore
after about 1750.
A familiar question arises over the introduction of the minuet and

trio into the symphony as the third movement of four, for which
priority has been claimed on behalf of both Mannheim and Vienna.
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Isolated precedents for this usage appear in works of the suite
tradition and in G.M. Monn’s famous D major symphony of 1740.
However, the latter work is the composer’s only four-movement
symphony, and the penultimate movement lacks a trio (see below,
§10). Credit for the sustained use of four-movement form must
therefore go to the Mannheim composer Johann Stamitz, over half of
whose symphonies incorporate a minuet and trio as the third
movement of four (see below, §9). In conjunction with this expansion,
Stamitz and others sought to give the finale greater substance, often
placing it in 2/4 and marking it Presto or Prestissimo so as to end the
symphony with a flourish. It may be noted here that the argument
that the four-movement symphony resulted from the addition of such
a movement at the end of a fast–slow–minuet cycle cannot be
maintained: the ‘minuets’ of the majority of early symphonies
correspond to the faster Italian type, without trio, not the more
stately French type with trio found in Stamitz’s four-movement
symphonies from the mid-1740s. The genesis of the four-movement
cycle is better explained by reference to the Austro-German parthia
(see Koch, 1802; see also Partita and Suite) as well as to hybrid
symphony-suites of a type common in Germany (see §§8–9, below),
genres that by definition unite abstract and dance movements.
Another addition to the basic plan of the symphony was the slow
introduction, which not only added length and stylistic variety, but
also freed the composer to use a wider variety of primary themes to
begin the Allegro, especially lyrical or folk-like themes that might
have seemed too lightweight as the initial gesture of a symphony.
Slow introductions evidently first appeared in three-movement
symphonies of the 1750s, and after c1760 they begin to be found as
part of the normal four-movement cycle, in both cases in works by
Austrian composers. (On this and other variants of the symphonic
cycle see below, §§10 and 14(i).)
First movements (and many finales) of 18th-century symphonies

generally conform to one of two basic plans, as already recognized
by J.A. Scheibe in his extensive discussion of the symphony in Der
critische Musikus of 1739. Most important is some version of large-
scale binary form, whether of the simple, asymmetrical, rounded (i.e.
with full recapitulation) or sonata type. Both parts of such a
movement are normally repeated, though after about 1770 the
repetition of the second part (development and recapitulation) is
frequently dropped. From the 1740s on, however, many symphonic
fast movements, especially within the Mannheim orbit, omit both
repetitions, a more processive approach doubtless derived from the
Italian opera overture and, ultimately, ritornello structure.
In contrast to these binary or binary-based plans, some of the

earliest symphonies, as well as large numbers of symphonies in more
conservative centres until late in the century, employ a more
continuous type of structure, without double bars and repeat signs,
that is related to the ritornello structure of the concerto (including
the ripieno concerto; see below, §6). In the simplest and most
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common of these types, designated here as tri-ritornello structure,
an opening section moves from the tonic to the dominant (or, in
minor, the relative major); after an elision, a second related section,
beginning with the same thematic material, moves from the
dominant to a related (usually modal) degree, often cadencing there;
and the third section essentially parallels the first but now remains
in the tonic. Obviously, except for the omission of repetitions, a
tripartite form of this type bears a strong resemblance to a rounded
binary or early sonata form without repeats, the second section
corresponding to the ‘development’ section, the third to the
recapitulation.
Sonata form as found in the 18th-century symphony should be

understood as encompassing a wide range of variants; indeed, it is
less a form than a flexible collection of characteristic procedures and
techniques. These include contrast and directional modulation
between tonic and dominant or other related key areas;
differentiation and functional specialization of thematic material;
slowing of harmonic rhythm to articulate and stabilize thematic
areas; development involving modulation and changes in material;
recapitulation; and orchestration and textural differentiation that
selectively enhance these procedures.
Three particular variants of sonata form should be mentioned here.

One is a type of binary in which the return to the tonic for the
recapitulation is marked by the return of the secondary rather than
the primary theme. Here labelled binary-sonata form, this type was
especially common in the early symphony. It was also the preferred
form at Mannheim (typically without repetitions), where the
occasional return to primary material after the reappearance of the
secondary theme may give the impression of a ‘reversed’ or ‘mirror’
recapitulation. However, this is not as common as often stated, and
in any event the rearrangement of material in a Mannheim
recapitulation often goes far beyond a mere reversal of the primary
and secondary themes. Conversely, many early sonata forms that
begin with the return of the primary theme in the tonic then
drastically abbreviate the material that had appeared subsequent to
it in the exposition, so that the result may nonetheless approach a
symmetrical binary form. It should also be noted that even into the
1770s many composers began part 2 (after the central double bar, if
there is one) by modulating quickly from the dominant back to the
tonic (the latter frequently marked by a restatement of the primary
theme) before moving on to other keys and, eventually, the
recapitulation; though ‘textbook’ sonata form would not condone this
procedure, it was considered appropriate and even desirable by
theorists of the time (e.g. Riepel, 1755).
A second variant is the movement type in which the recapitulation

begins in a key other than the tonic, normally the subdominant.
Familiar from isolated movements by Mozart and Schubert, this
technique is often found in symphonies by the Viennese composer
F.L. Gassmann (for a fuller discussion of this technique see Sonata
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form, §3, (iii)). A third variant, ubiquitous in opera overtures after
c1735 and occasionally found in symphonies, is ‘exposition-
recapitulation’ form, consisting simply of an unrepeated exposition
followed by an unrepeated recapitulation, without development but
frequently with a retransition connecting the two sections (as in
Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro). In a further variant, a slow
movement may be inserted between the two sections (as in Mozart’s
overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail). The latter procedure is,
in turn, one version of a da capo or related cycle in which some or all
of the first movement returns after the slow movement. Such
designs are found in opera overtures throughout the period and
occur from time to time in concert symphonies.
Although many characteristic features of the Classical style occur in

isolated contexts in earlier works, no mere collection of traits can
generate its full character, which results from a higher-level
synthesis that may be termed ‘concinnity’ – a skilful and elegant
arrangement and mutual adjustment of the various elements or
parameters. Once this central technique had been mastered,
composers of symphonies could turn to other characteristics: at the
phrase level, a weighted hierarchy of punctuation necessary to
clarify their increasingly more complex phrase, sentence and
paragraph structures; at the section level, a differentiation and
eventual specialization of material according to function (primary,
transitional, secondary and closing); and at the movement level, a
sophisticated set of techniques for the development of thematic
material, both within and outside the development section. Thus, by
comparison with the relative homogeneity of the Baroque style, the
first movement of a Classical symphony may signal the contrast
between the primary and secondary groups not merely by changes in
melody but also by changes in dynamics, orchestration, texture,
rhythm (both harmonic and surface), register and phrase length.
This kind of coordination is both a defining characteristic of the
mature Classical symphonic style and a major source of its power.
With respect to the remaining movements of the symphony, the

formal structure of second movements spans a wide range, from
various binary and ternary types to the sonata, variation, rondo and
refrain forms characteristic of the latter part of the century. Early
finales are usually dance-like 3/8 or 3/4 movements or (less
commonly) a variety of 2/4 types, all normally in some sort of binary
form. In the course of the century finales took on greater weight and
breadth, often incorporating full sonata forms comparable to those
found in first movements. Of a number of alternate types, including
the fugal finale and the theme and variations, the most important
are those based on the rondo principle. The earliest such examples
seem to be the finales en rondeau found in certain French
symphonies before mid-century, while in Vienna and related centres
rondo finales began to appear in the 1750s, sonata-rondo finales in
the 1770s.
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6. Precursors.
The traditional explanation for the genesis of the symphony, found in
countless textbooks and more specialized studies, has been that the
three-movement Italian opera overture or sinfonia of the type
attributed to Alessandro Scarlatti was simply transplanted from the
theatre to the chamber, where it took on independent life as the
‘concert’ symphony. Research on the early symphony beginning in
the 1950s has, however, challenged this overture-transfer theory in
favour of a broader and more inclusive approach, one that gives
equivalent attention to such independent instrumental genres as the
sonata and concerto in their manifold forms (e.g. Churgin, 1963;
Wolf, 1983, 1995).
Of the many genres that furnished models for the early symphony,
the Baroque sonata da chiesa has generally been dismissed owing to
its association with the four-movement Corellian type, which
alternates pathetic slow movements with fugal Allegros. Yet church
sonatas a 3, a 4 and larger in such northern Italian centres as
Bologna, Brescia and Venice in the second half of the 17th century
frequently begin with a fast movement; in the case of the brilliant
works for trumpet and strings popular in Bologna, these movements
are even in a mostly homophonic style and are known to have been
played with doubled parts. As a matter of fact, beginning as early as
Maurizio Cazzati’s op.35 of 1665 it is not uncommon to find trio (and
larger) sonatas in the three-movement pattern later associated with
the concerto, overture and symphony. A more direct model for the
symphony was the ‘neutral’ trio and quartet sonata characteristic of
the period after about 1700, suitable for either church or chamber;
these are often in three homophonic movements and thus clearly
adumbrate the early symphony, especially when the opening
movements are in some type of binary form.
The sonata da camera and other types of suite, especially for

orchestra, provided an obvious source for the binary forms that
came to predominate in the symphony. Particularly interesting in this
regard is a type of trio sonata popular in northern Italy in the late
17th and early 18th centuries that begins with a balletto, a dance in
fast or moderate tempo, related to the allemande, that generally
displays few overt dance traits. The abstract instumental style of
such movements, homophonic and in binary form, provides an
obvious parallel to the opening movement of a symphony.
Even more directly related to the symphony is the little-known genre

designated variously as the ripieno concerto (i.e. ‘concerto for the
ripieno’), concerto ripieno (Vivaldi’s own term) or concerto a 4 or a 5
(the latter grouping usually including a second viola part; see Wolf,
1983). These are orchestral works (i.e. with doubled parts),
generally for strings and continuo alone, that despite the designation
‘concerto’ have no solo parts (or purely negligible ones). The term is
thus being used in its standard early meaning of ‘work for an
ensemble’, with no connotation of opposition or contrast between
Page 9 of 94
solo and tutti. While many of these concertos resemble the Corellian
church sonata in form and style, the majority anticipate the first
symphonies in their preference for brilliant homophonic writing and
shorter formal cycles beginning with fast movements (most often
fast–slow–fast). A fair number of opening movements after 1700 are
even in large binary forms, though ritornello types are more common
(see above, §5).
The earliest known ripieno concertos are the six concerti a 4 in

Giuseppe Torelli’s op.5 of 1692. These were followed in 1698 by the
ten in Torelli’s Concerti musicali op.6, which firmly established the
three-movement fast–slow–fast pattern as the norm for the genre,
and the three in G.L. Gregori’s Concerti grossi op.2. The next few
decades saw the appearance of many new sets of ripieno concertos.
Soon, however, the genre merged more or less gradually with the
symphony a 4; after the 1730s, works that might formerly have been
called concertos are generally called symphonies, the former term
now being reserved primarily for works featuring tutti–solo contrast.
A final important progenitor of the symphony is the Italian opera

overture. De-emphasis of the overture as the unique parent of the
symphony does not mean that it did not take a prominent part in the
creation of the latter genre: it was the probable source of the label
‘sinfonia’ (though the same term appears frequently in northern Italy
as an alternative designation for trio sonatas da chiesa); it is
orchestral; and it favours rapid, brilliant movements in homophonic
style, after c1700 generally within standard three-movement form.
(Alessandro Scarlatti’s Tutto il mal non vien per nuocere of 1681 is
often cited as the first opera with a three-movement overture; but it
is only the revised version, Dal male il bene of 1687, that has such
an overture in extant sources. An earlier example, therefore, is G.A.
Perti’s overture to Oreste in Argo of 1685. In any case, as already
noted, three-movement form was by no means exclusive to the
overture.) Moreover, there exist early examples of the transfer of
overtures to the chamber and of ‘chamber’ works (sonatas,
concertos, sinfonias) to the opera house, for example in the music of
Vivaldi and G.B. Sammartini. But such transfer was relatively rare
before about 1740, and it was only after that date that many
elements of the overture – in particular its use of a larger orchestra
(with woodwind and brass) and concomitant simplification in style
and stress on dynamic effects – began to manifest themselves
strongly in the symphony proper (see below, §7).
It is also relevant to note that the overture in the period before

about 1740 spans an enormous range from the stylistic standpoint:
overtures can be found that match each and every type described in
the foregoing survey, including many three-movement works with
binary first movements. Hence the influence of the overture was
anything but monolithic and is accordingly all the more difficult to
delineate with precision. At the same time, the theory that the opera
overture was the principal basis for the symphony has as one of its
weakest points the fact that the two genres were intended for quite
Page 10 of 94
different venues and kinds of audience, whereas the circumstances
of performance and the social function of ripieno concertos and (in
many cases) sonatas were precisely those of early symphonies.
7. Italy.
Writing from Italy in 1739, President Charles de Brosses of France
commented that although Naples had the finest conservatories and
Bologna the best school of singing, ‘Lombardy excelled in
instrumental music’. He was probably referring at least in part to the
spate of works produced in and around Milan by the two most
important and prolific early symphonists, G.B. Sammartini (1700/01–
75) and Antonio Brioschi (fl c1725–c50). Each of these composers
wrote symphonies that can be dated to the early 1730s: movements
of two Sammartini symphonies also appear as ‘Introduzioni’ to Acts
2 and 3 of his opera Memet of 1732 (the overture to that opera also
circulated as an independent symphony), and a symphony by
Brioschi appears as the overture to a Hebrew cantata of 1733, and
two independent symphonies by him exist in sources dated 1734 (in
I-CMbc). As the style of these works is already rather advanced as
compared with other early works of these composers, it seems likely
that both were already writing symphonies by the late 1720s.
This conclusion is supported by the publication in 1729 of Andrea

Zani’s op.2, containing six ‘sinfonie da camera’ a 4 and six violin
concertos. Zani’s publication provides both the earliest explicit date
for works that are unquestionably part of the symphonic tradition
and one of the earliest known uses of the term ‘sinfonia’ by a
composer to designate such a work; until the 1740s sources for the
‘symphonies’ of Sammartini and Brioschi are just as likely to label
them overtures, sonatas or even ‘concerti a 4’ (as in four Milanese
manuscripts of Brioschi symphonies in CZ-Pnm). That Zani was
from Lombardy (Casalmaggiore, near Cremona) strengthens the
claim of this region to be the most important early centre of
symphony composition. This is important not only intrinsically but
also because Lombardy during most of this period was ruled by
Austria, providing a long-term basis for the transfer of works, styles
and practices between the two areas. Other early symphony
composers from Milan include Ferdinando Galimberti (fl c1730–50),
G.B. Lampugnani (1708–1788) and Count Giorgio Giulini (1717–80).
With one or two possible exceptions, Sammartini’s approximately 20

symphonies from before c1740 and all of Brioschi’s over 50 extant
symphonies are in three movements and are scored for strings alone
(a 4 or, less often, a 3). Though several first movements by each
composer make use of ritornello-based plans, without double bars,
the great majority are in some type of binary form; both composers
show a strong preference for large rounded binary or early sonata
forms, generally with extended ‘development’ sections and full
(though often reformulated) recapitulations. By comparison, four of
Page 11 of 94
the six first movements of Zani’s op.2 symphonies make use of
ritornello procedures of the type common in the ripieno concerto,
while two are in binary form (one simple and one rounded). Thus
even in its early phase the Milanese symphony demonstrated a
commitment to the basic formal design that the mainstream
symphony was to favour throughout the century. It was only after
about 1740, however, that clearly differentiated and demarcated
secondary themes became standard in the concert symphony,
somewhat later than in the overture.
The evolution in Sammartini’s symphonies during his early period

from a basically late Baroque idiom reminiscent of Vivaldi’s ripieno
concertos to his individual version of the early Classical style shows
how various traits characteristic of the earlier era could be
redirected for Classical purposes. The powerful beat-marking
rhythms of the earlier style moved to the bass, so that the upper
voices could articulate larger phrase units; counterpoint – still a
prominent element of both Sammartini’s and Brioschi’s style, seen
especially in the independence of their second violin parts –
submitted to coordinated cadences lest it obscure the main melodic
line; the superb Baroque motivic development survived and
flourished, both within and outside development sections; and the
deft elisions and overlaps so common in the high Baroque now
functioned to prevent loss of momentum between the more heavily
punctuated phrases and sections. Sammartini’s slow movements are
often quite extended and make use of highly expressive (sometimes
almost eccentric) chromaticism, both harmonic and melodic. He also
seems to have grasped the importance in a concert symphony of a
substantial finale, developing compact sonata forms that require the
listener’s full attention.
That the symphony in Italy was not exclusive to Lombardy even in its
earliest phase is implied by two sets published posthumously by
Boivin and Le Clerc in Paris in the early 1730s, each consisting of 12
symphonies a 4; these are by the rather mysterious composer
Alberto Gallo, who is said in the first of these prints to have ‘died
young’. Gallo is further identified as being ‘da Venezia’ in
manuscripts dated 1724 in the Estense collection in Vienna (A-Wn),
a geographical connection supported by the fact that this collection
originated in the Veneto (near Padua). The works in one of the 1724
manuscripts, a set of nine ‘sinfonie’ with parts for two violins, cello
and violone, may well have been intended for ripieno performance; if
so, Gallo’s use of the term ‘sinfonia’ – in this case for trio
symphonies – antedates Zani’s in op.2 by five years (see above). All
Gallo’s symphonies, in a late Vivaldian style, are in three
movements, usually with a brief and often purely transitional slow
movement. Similarly, with the exception of six movements from the
1724 set that use ritornello procedures, all Gallo’s first movements
follow a normal binary plan (both simple and rounded, even in the
1724 set). South of Milan and Venice, in Bologna, the early
symphony is represented by the 24 symphonies of Padre Martini,
Page 12 of 94
extending from 1736 to 1777. Perhaps surprisingly, the symphonies
of the great contrapuntist are in a generally homophonic style,
though they still tend to reflect the Baroque motivic tradition.
During approximately the period just discussed, an important new

generation of Italian opera composers, including such Neapolitans
as Leonardo Vinci, Leonardo Leo and G.B. Pergolesi, were making
strides in creating a new style for opera, both seria and buffa. The
overtures to their operas were similarly influential, not only in that
they were circulated as concert symphonies but also in that many of
the techniques and practices they developed were eventually
adapted for use in independent concert symphonies (see Hell, 1971).
These works demanded large orchestras, often with trumpets and
timpani, which were skilfully employed to create brilliant and
striking dynamic effects. Both Vinci’s overture to Artaserse (1730,
Rome) and Pergolesi’s to Olimpiade (1735, Rome) call for an
orchestra a 11 and begin with unmarked but unmistakable
crescendo passages that rise gradually through more than an octave.
Indeed, throughout the entire first movement of both these pieces
the extremely homophonic texture, combined with block-like rather
than linear treatment of the woodwind and brass, creates a massive
effect perfectly suited to the large theatres for which these works
were intended.
The first movement of Leo’s overture to Lucio Papirio (1735, Naples)

is an early example of a formal type that was to remain the norm for
the Italian overture for much of the century: a clear exposition-
recapitulation form (see above, §5) in which primary, transitional,
secondary and closing material is fully differentiated and
demarcated in each half. The next generation of opera composers,
including most notably Nicolò Jommelli and the Venetian Baldassare
Galuppi, adopted this basic plan in most of their overtures of the
1740s and 50s, though naturally with the expanded phrase
dimensions and increasing thematic specialization characteristic of
that period. Jommelli and Galuppi rely extensively on dynamic
effects, among them, beginning in the late 1740s, explicitly marked
crescendo passages. According to J.F. Reichardt (1774–6), ‘When
Jommelli first introduced [the crescendo] in Rome, the listeners rose
from their seats during the crescendo, and only at the diminuendo
noted that it had taken their breaths away. I myself have experienced
this phenomenon in Mannheim’. This passage is often cited as a
description of a Mannheim crescendo, omitting any reference to
Jommelli.
Though it was in fact Mannheim that showed the most overt interest
in adapting this new overture style to the concert symphony (see
below, §9), few composers in Europe remained completely aloof from
it. Sammartini’s symphonies after about 1740, for example, call for
an orchestra a 6, with horns or trumpets, or a 8, with oboes and
horns. The wind tend to function not as linear doubling but as a
separate textural bloc, often providing a sustained chordal
background or rhythmic punctuation. Other changes in Sammartini’s
Page 13 of 94
style after c1740 include regular use of clear secondary themes,
expansion of the phrase dimension to a full four- and eight-bar
hierarchy and further slowing and differentiation of the harmonic
rhythm combined with increased use of pedal points. Similar
innovations characterized the evolution of the symphony at mid-
century in all but the most conservative centres.
The next generation of Italian symphonists included two fine

composers, Luigi Boccherini and Gaetano Brunetti; but both spent
most of their careers in Spain rather than Italy (see below, §13). The
reverse situation is represented by the early symphonies of J.C.
Bach, who was in Italy from 1754 to 1762, and later by the prolific
Czech composer Václav Pichl (1741–1805), composer to the Austrian
governor of Milan from 1777 until 1796. Of Italians resident in Italy
one may mention Gaetano Pugnani (1731–98), F.P. Ricci (1732–
1817), P.M. Crispi (c1737–1797) and Gaudenzio Comi (fl c1775–85).
Pugnani’s over 40 symphonies, the majority in four movements, are
typical for their sometimes bland lyricism; cantabile ideas pervade
even the primary sections. For the most part it seems fair to say that
Italian composers of the second half of the century failed to realize
the potential that Sammartini had initiated, possibly because of a
disinclination towards the ‘serious style’ implicit in the evolution of
the symphony. Yet in the supreme works of Haydn and especially
Mozart there is rarely a movement that does not by some touch of
cantabile line or rhythmic spark pay tribute to the Italian
background.
8. Dresden, Berlin and German Protestant

centres.
Of the two most important courts in north Germany, that of the
Elector of Saxony in Dresden (and for part of this period Warsaw)
seems to have fostered relatively few independent symphonies.
Among the principal instrumental composers at court, including J.D.
Heinichen (1683–1729) and J.G. Pisendel (1687–1755), only J.B.G.
Neruda (c1711–1776) produced more than a handful of symphonies.
Of four works of Heinichen that come into question as possible
concert symphonies, two are called sonatas but have doubled string
parts, while a third is untitled. All include full wind parts and consist
of a through-composed first movement, a brief connective Adagio or
Largo and a binary finale. Each opening movement ends with a
surprise elision connecting it to the succeeding Adagio or Largo, a
device learnt from the Neapolitan overture and found in many later
north German symphonies. The fourth work, called ‘sinfonia’, is a
symphony-suite of a type fairly common in central and north
Germany: it appends a series of French dances to a normal three-
movement cycle. If these works are not simply detached overtures,
Page 14 of 94
as are three others by Heinichen extant in Dresden, they would
number among the earliest concert symphonies (Heinichen died in
1729).
The pre-eminent Dresden court composer, J.A. Hasse (1699–1783),

apparently wrote no independent symphonies, although his
overtures appear as separate works in collections throughout
Europe. These influential works illustrate many of the basic formal
and stylistic characteristics of the north German symphony until the
last decades of the century. All are in three movements, often elided
or otherwise connected. Hasse’s first movements exhibit the clear
ritornello forms (usually of the tri-ritornello type) that he had learnt
in the 1720s and 30s in Italy, combined after about 1740 with a more
up-to-date approach to thematic differentiation. Stylistically they are
relatively conservative, frequently falling into repetitious, motivic
rhythms particularly unfortunate at this time of stylistic change. In
the high Baroque style even the most note-repetitive themes gain
relief from the rapid chord changes, sequential modulations and
textural activity; but in the emerging Classical style the stabilized
harmony and balanced subphrases often turn Hasse’s potentially
vigorous ideas into arid repetitions. In other respects he showed
some originality, for instance in seeking new forms (the minuet-
rondo finale of the overture to Asteria, 1737) and new tone colours
(two english horns in the overture to Il trionfo di Clelia, 1766,
Vienna; the use of english horns, found also in Haydn’s Symphony
no.22 of 1764, was a Viennese tradition).
The principal Dresden contribution to the early concert symphony

came not at the electoral court itself but in the private Kapelle of the
powerful Saxon privy councillor and cabinet minister Count Brühl,
who employed J.S. Bach’s eventual successor Gottlob Harrer (1703–
55) from 1731 until the latter’s departure for Leipzig in 1750. During
this period Harrer produced over two dozen symphonies, 19 of
which are still extant in score (mostly autograph, in D-LEm). Of
these 13 bear dates ranging from 1732 to 1747, earning them a
place among the earliest concert symphonies. Worth noting in these
scores is the composer’s consistent use of the title ‘Sinfonia’. As
remarked above, Italian symphonies of the same period use a wide
variety of titles; but Harrer’s usage (and other evidence) suggests
that Germany preferred the term ‘sinfonia’ from the beginning.
Harrer’s symphonies range from small pieces for strings alone to
large suite-related works that call for oboes, flutes and three horns
in evocation of the hunt. Once again the general style is for the most
part italianate (Harrer had studied in Italy in the 1720s) and the first
movements are ritornello-based.
The other principal court of north Germany was that of Frederick the
Great in Berlin. Frederick’s Kapellmeister, C.H. Graun (1703/4–59),
devoted himself primarily to opera, but his overtures, like Hasse’s,
were widely distributed as independent works. His brother J.G.
Graun (1702/3–71), Konzertmeister at the Prussian court, provides
another example of a German composer whose style was formed in
Page 15 of 94
Italy in the 1720s and retained its basic character from then on; in
this respect it was not unlike Frederick’s taste in music. Graun’s
nearly 100 concert symphonies are important both for establishing
the symphony as a central genre at Berlin and for their quality. While
they outwardly resemble the overtures of Hasse and of his brother,
Carl Heinrich, they are more contrapuntal in style and show a firmer
sense of Classical balance, whether at the phrase level or in the well-
planned climaxes of their development sections. Graun’s basic
approach was followed by other composers at court who wrote fewer
symphonies, most notably Franz Benda (1709–86).
The 18 symphonies of C.P.E. Bach (1714–88) are divided fairly evenly

between the eight written for the Berlin court (one in 1741, the
remainder in 1755–62) and the ten composed after his move to
Hamburg in 1767. Of the latter, four are string symphonies written
for Gottfried van Swieten in 1773, while the other six, for large
orchestra, were written in 1775–6 and published in 1780 in Leipzig.
Bach’s symphonies, surprisingly consistent in style for works that
span three and a half decades, occupy a somewhat enigmatic
position in the history of the symphony. Few of them achieved wide
distribution, and since his contemporaries seemed unable to adopt
or adapt Bach’s idiosyncratic style, his influence, though often
intense, was selective.
The fundamental enigma of that style results from a sometimes

almost bewildering combination of Baroque, Classical and pre-
Romantic traits. The presence of his father can be felt in C.P.E.
Bach’s frequent polyphonic textures, whether ingenious, casual
imitation or serious fugato. Equally Baroque are his passages in
undifferentiated rhythm, often combined with melodic sequence. By
contrast, his motivic treatment has evolved beyond simple linear
continuation to a process of significant change and growth that is
fully Classical in character. In similar fashion, the structure of even
the latest of Bach’s first movements, though often described as
sonata form without repeats, is squarely rooted in the older tri- or
quadri-ritornello schemes that characterize the majority of north
German symphonies; yet his mastery of the development process,
including development by fragmentation or permutation,
contrapuntal combination and new harmonic or orchestral
colouration, leads beyond his contemporaries towards Haydn and
Beethoven. Parallel with this redefinition of motivic play, Bach also
deepened the function of ornaments, turning them from charming
appliqués into affective vehicles of the empfindsam style, capable of
reflecting every nuance of feeling yet fully integrated into the
melodic line. His chromatic or dissonant ornaments and sudden
dynamic shifts concentrate one’s responses on brief episodes of
violent feeling that sometimes seem deliberately shocking. Neither
these Romantic moments nor the Baroque details of rhythm and
ornamentation requires a large musical unit, and thus even Bach’s
longer movements do not necessarily achieve the kind of breadth
generally associated with the Classical symphonic style.
Page 16 of 94
One reason for this is that, in the symphonic style, original and
colourful moments of the kind common in C.P.E. Bach may interrupt
the flow or disrupt the balance of the larger design. Bach’s approach
may be illuminated by a comparison between his use of surprise and
Haydn’s. For Bach, surprise seems to have been important in and of
itself, for its direct emotional impact. For Haydn, too, it created
emotional excitement, but that excitement is generally related in
some manner to structural considerations, deriving from and
enhancing the awareness of a total, unfolding design. This difference
in emphasis implies no lack of understanding of Classical continuity
or articulation on Bach’s part, and his acute sensitivity to harmonic
tension and excursion went far beyond the conventional tonal
patterns of the day, including the use of remote keys for slow
movements and as developmental goals. Among numerous other
originalities are the dramatic connection of movements by devices
such as deceptive cadences, an extension of a familiar north German
ploy; the use of unusual instrumental colours, ranges and textural
distributions; the exploitation of new chord types and dissonant
combinations; and a command of dynamics that, like other aspects of
his style, influenced the coming century more than his own.
In addition to Dresden and Berlin, numerous smaller courts of

central and north Germany maintained superior musical
establishments that after about 1740 cultivated the symphony, often
(at least initially) in a form incorporating elements of the Baroque
suite. Of these one may mention Zerbst, in Saxony, where J.F. Fasch
(1688–1758) wrote at least 19 symphonies – seven in a unique form
with an alla breve movement, usually fugal, as the third movement of
four – in addition to his nearly 100 French overtures; Hesse-Kassel,
represented by the symphonies of Fortunato Chelleri (c1690–1757)
and the Swedish-born J.J. Agrell (1701–65; from 1746 in Nuremberg);
Rudolstadt in Thuringia, whose Kapellmeister C.G. Scheinpflug
(1722–70) left 25 symphonies in autograph score (now at D-RUl);
Bückeburg, where J.S. Bach’s third-youngest son J.C.F. Bach (1732–
95) wrote a total of 20 symphonies – ten early in his career, ten in
the 1790s – of which only four from each period have survived; and
Saxe-Gotha, where Georg Benda (1722–95), better known for his
pioneering melodramas and other vocal works, also composed some
30 symphonies.
At the ducal court of Mecklenburg-Schwerin to the north, two

generations of the Hertel family produced a notable corpus of
symphonies. Until recently these had all been attributed to Johann
Wilhelm Hertel (1727–89), but research has now shown that 24 of
them still extant at Schwerin (D-SWl) are by his father, Johann
Christian Hertel (1697–1754; see Diekow, 1977). These are generally
of the Graun-Hasse type and range from string symphonies to festive
works with three trumpets and timpani. With the attribution of the
works in an earlier style to his father, J.W. Hertel’s symphonies can
now be seen as the examples of fully developed Classical style that
they are, well constructed and with thematic material that is nicely
Page 17 of 94
profiled and differentiated. Equally up-to-date in orchestration,
Hertel often added flutes and obbligato bassoons to the standard
complement of strings, oboes and horns.
In south-western Germany there were several other important

Protestant courts that actively cultivated symphonic composition and
performance, particularly in the early decades of the period. Their
composers included Christoph Graupner (1683–1760) and J.S. Endler
(1694–1762) at Hesse-Darmstadt and J.M. Molter (1696–1765) at
Karlsruhe, whose 170 symphonies make him the most prolific
symphonist of the 18th century. Just as at the closely related smaller
courts to the north, these composers often combined the symphony
and suite to produce a hybrid form, appending one or more dances
to a standard three-movement cycle or otherwise incorporating
dance movements within the cycle. As one would expect, these
works generally have a pronounced Baroque flavour, both
stylistically and in their use of instruments. At the same time, music
at these courts could not escape the influence of the dominant
Catholic courts of the region (notably Mannheim and Stuttgart),
especially after c1760.
9. Mannheim and other German Catholic courts.

While Habsburg Vienna presents a truly imperial diversity of
symphonic activity, Mannheim stands at the opposite pole in its
concentration of talent and energy in a single electoral court, a
single orchestra and, at least initially, a single individual, Johann
Stamitz (1717–57). Stamitz was a musician of exceptional drive and
innovatory talent who gathered an orchestra of virtuosos and trained
them to a pitch of discipline that astounded all listeners. The
vaunted Mannheim orchestral effects, such as the famous crescendo
and sforzando-piano, were actually more Italian than Palatine in
origin (see Mannheim style). But the expert ensemble of the
Mannheim Kapelle, particularly when playing Mannheim symphonies
specifically composed to exploit these effects, created the strong
impression that Mannheim was the centre of a new and distinctive
style.
The sheer volume and wide distribution of the symphonies produced

at Mannheim played a part in its prominence. The virtuosos that
Stamitz assembled were nearly all active composers, and his tireless
efforts provided both motivation and a successful model. Beginning
in the 1740s, and capitalizing on advances made by such Italians as
Jommelli and Galuppi, Stamitz worked out several basic Classical
procedures that left early Viennese symphonists like Monn and
Wagenseil temporarily far behind. First, he perceived that larger
Classical dimensions required broader contrasts, which in turn
required clearer stabilization of the main tonal areas as a foundation
for those contrasts; in earlier works neither melodic nor rhythmic
contrasts could have their full effect against the hyperactive
Page 18 of 94
Baroque harmony and bass line. Similarly, stabilization in small
dimensions – slowing down of the chord rhythm, the use of radically
simpler chord progressions – was a prerequisite for contrast at the
phrase level. At the same time, as if sensing the dangers of too much
stability, Stamitz typically constructed musical ideas with rhythms
that created momentum, or with connective features such as
thematic upbeats and matching activity in other parts, so that each
phrase seems impatient to launch into the next. This quality of
overall rhythmic élan and the homogeneity of this type of material
implies a certain degree of interchangeability, and in fact Stamitz
often developed ideas more by permutation or reassembly of phrases
and subphrases than by actual variation. Using these principles in
conjunction with his ever-exciting exploitation of the orchestra,
Stamitz was able to create an unusually high proportion of effective
symphonies.
From the formal standpoint, Stamitz and most of his colleagues and
successors at Mannheim preferred a type of binary-sonata form to
sonata form with full recapitulation. Expositions in all but his earliest
symphonies are generally well differentiated. The outer movements
until approximately the late 1740s all have double bars and repeat
signs. Thereafter, however, probably under the influence of the
Italian opera overture, Stamitz began to drop the repeats in fast
movements in favour of a more volatile move directly into the
development section. While the latter section is often intensively
‘developmental’ in the later sense, Stamitz apparently felt no need
thereafter to return to the primary material in the tonic, which is
usually marked instead by the return of the secondary theme. As if
by way of compensation, Stamitz and the other Mannheimers often
add weight towards the end of the movement, for example by
inserting a final quasi-ritornello of the opening material or recalling
a striking crescendo passage. However, as already noted, the
impression of a true ‘reverse’ or ‘mirror’ recapitulation is neither so
frequent nor so straightforward at Mannheim as is commonly
assumed.
As discussed above (§5), Johann Stamitz deserves the principal

credit for expansion of the symphony to four movements by insertion
of a minuet with trio before the finale (see Wolf, 1981). Beginning in
the mid- to late 1740s, most of his symphonies adopt this plan, at
least in authentic sources (somewhat oddly, the earliest French
prints of his symphonies usually excise the minuets). Nor is it
generally recognized that the second generation of symphonists at
Mannheim abandoned the use of a minuet and trio movement in the
1760s, returning to the older three-movement plan.
The first generation of Mannheim symphonists included two figures

older than Stamitz, F.X. Richter (1709–89) and Ignaz Holzbauer
(1711–83). Both came to Mannheim as well-established composers,
Richter in 1749 from southern Germany, Holzbauer in 1753 from
Vienna and Moravia via Stuttgart. It is important to note that both
composers contributed significantly to the earliest phases of the
Page 19 of 94
symphony long before they arrived in Mannheim: Richter had
already published 12 symphonies a 4 in Paris by 1744, while a large
body of symphonies by Holzbauer still exists in Czech and Austrian
libraries, some of them probably dating from his early years in
Moravia during the 1730s, others from his Vienna period before
1750.
Richter’s symphonies written at Mannheim are the more

conservative of the two, featuring motivic rhythms, imitative
textures, compact miniature forms and unadventurous orchestration.
His generally regressive orientation did not, however, exclude
imaginative harmonic details, and he frequently made use of
surprise, most commonly in the form of abrupt pauses and
unexpected rhythmic twists. On occasion Richter adopts a quite up-
to-date style for his opening themes, only to lapse after a few
phrases into undifferentiated rhythm and motivic sequential
techniques; even in the 18th century he was criticized for his
reliance on sequence. Richter cannot have found Mannheim
particularly congenial, and he left in 1769 to become Kapellmeister
of Strasbourg Cathedral, henceforth devoting his talents to sacred
music. By contrast, Holzbauer was Kapellmeister for the theatre at
Mannheim, and his primary compositional responsibilities were in
the realm of vocal music, especially opera seria (he made several
trips to Italy early in his career). Thus it is not surprising that his
symphonies are often italianate (especially Venetian) in style while
also having recourse to Viennese formal designs and Mannheim
melodic and rhythmic mannerisms.
The second generation of Mannheim symphonists were all pupils of

Stamitz, and thus their works show more consistency than those of
the older composers just considered. The Bavarian cellist Anton Fils
(1733–60) has in the past been grouped with the first generation
owing to his early death, but his date of birth and the progressive,
somewhat stereotyped style of his symphonies clearly place him with
the younger composers. Fils’s natural, sure-footed movement,
accessible melodic style and uncomplicated textures led to early
popularity. Yet the immediate appeal of his music often hides a subtly
irregular phrase structure that is all the more interesting because
concealed. For example, a Symphony in A published in Paris in 1760
(DTB, iv, Jg.iii/1, 135) opens with a crescendo passage underlined by
accelerating surface rhythm, rising line, expanding texture and the
gradual addition of instruments. Less immediately noticeable is his
parallel acceleration and eventual deceleration in phrase rhythm: 2
+ 2, 2; 2 + 2, 1; 1 + 1, 1 + 1, 1, 2 (1 + 1), 2. As if to balance this
refined art, Fils frequently drew upon folk idiom not only for his
minuets and trios but also for his outer movements.
Stamitz’s successor as leader of the Mannheim orchestra was

Christian Cannabich (1731–98), who maintained and even raised its
level of performance and discipline. Cannabich’s 73 symphonies
were strongly influenced by the overtures of Jommelli, with whom he
studied. Until fairly late in his career they are stereotyped and
Page 20 of 94
rather pedestrian, relying heavily on dynamic effects and on
standard Mannheim melodic clichés such as the turn. In the 1780s
and early 1790s, however, after removal of the court to Munich in
1778, Cannabich produced a number of larger, more complex works
of considerable melodic appeal and developmental ingenuity. As
might be expected, Cannabich’s treatment of the orchestra is
exemplary; the wind are given ample solo material, notably the
clarinets, which had already appeared in Stamitz’s late symphonies.
Formally, Cannabich’s symphonies changed in a number of ways in
the course of his career. His early works are in four movements, but
in the early 1760s he shifted abruptly to the use of three. Many of
the Mannheim composers made regular visits to Paris, and French
influence may account for the sharp rise in the number of three-
movement symphonies in the works of the second generation.
Cannabich’s first movements are mostly of the binary-sonata type
until the 1770s, when full sonata form becomes more prevalent;
clear secondary themes are virtually always present, and
development sections tend to be short in all but the late works.
Finally, double bars and repeat signs occur until the mid-1760s, after
which, like Stamitz a generation earlier, he turned to the more
continuous effect of a movement without repetitions.
The modern editions of the symphonies of Cannabich’s co-

Konzertmeister at Mannheim, Carl Joseph Toeschi (1731–88), include
a cautionary example of the slanting of evidence: Hugo Riemann,
concerned to prove that the four-movement symphony originated at
Mannheim, selected one of only one or two such works by Toeschi
among his 80-odd symphonies (DTB, xiii, Jg.vii/2). Moreover, this
symphony is representative of only a small group of early works
characterized by motivic thematic material, frequent imitative
textures and lack of sectional contrast. Elsewhere Toeschi wrote in
an uncomplicated, smoothly lyrical style with generally simple
textures, clearly punctuated themes and effective orchestration, the
latter notable for its difficult violin parts.
Several other composers often associated with the second

generation of Mannheim symphonists actually had only limited
connection with the electoral court. Franz Beck (1734–1809), known
for the impulsive originality of his symphonies, was born there and
evidently studied with Stamitz, but he seems to have left as a young
man and was never employed by the court; most of his career was
spent in Marseilles and Bordeaux. Similarly, Stamitz’s sons Carl
(1745–1801; see §11) and Anton (1750–between 1796 and 1809) left
Mannheim in 1770 and spent the most important part of their
creative lives in Paris. Nor was the violinist, bassoonist and
composer Ernst Eichner (1740–77) ever directly associated with
Mannheim, but until 1772 with the closely-related court of
Zweibrücken and from 1773 with Berlin. His 30 extant symphonies,
written only from 1769 on, are very well-crafted, especially in their
orchestration and sense of formal balance; unlike those of the
Page 21 of 94
Mannheimers, they consistently employ full sonata form, with clear
specialization of all thematic functions, in both opening movements
and finales.
The numerous courts of Bavaria also proved fertile in their

cultivation of the symphony. On this count the electoral court at
Munich seems to have been most active in the early part of our
period. One important body of symphonies was produced by the
chamber composer Joseph Camerloher (1710–43), whose works have
continually been confused with those of his younger brother
Placidus. However, recent research has shown him to be the
composer not only of the 12 symphonies attributed specifically to
him but of the great majority of some 40 others attributed to
‘Camerloher’ without given name (see Forsberg, 1984). These works
show a clearly Baroque melodic, rhythmic and textural profile, with
much use of imitation and other contrapuntal devices. By contrast,
the symphonies of his brother Placidus von Camerloher (1718–82),
Kapellmeister to the Bishop of Freising, are generally homophonic
and show a clear tendency towards Classical thematic treatment.
Another body of early symphonies at Munich comprises the 26
extant works by Wenceslaus Wodiczka (between 1715 and 1720–74;
Konzertmeister from 1747). 24 survive in a single set of parts
bearing the date 1758, half of them with trumpets and timpani; nine
of these are in a single movement and were probably intended for
use in church. In the decades before the arrival of the Mannheim
court in 1778, however, Munich seems not to have favoured the
symphony as a genre, perhaps owing to the overwhelming interest in
Italian opera there.
Of the many other musically active courts in the region, two in

northern Bavaria should be singled out, those of Oettingen-
Wallerstein and Regensburg. One of the most prolific symphonists of
the Classical period, F.X. Pokorny (1729–94), was active at both,
moving from the former to the latter in 1766. His works for
Oettingen-Wallerstein contain some of the most difficult horn parts
of the period, composed for the outstanding group of hornists
resident there. Other prominent later symphonists at Oettingen-
Wallerstein were the court intendant Ignaz von Beecke (1733–1803),
two of whose symphonies in minor contain noteworthy pre-Romantic
traits, and the gifted Antonio Rosetti (c1750–1792), whose style
combines Mozartian, Haydnesque and individual touches. The
symphony at Regensburg during the same period is represented by
the court intendant Theodor von Schacht (1748–1823), who
produced over 30 symphonies between c1770 and 1792. Further
west, on the Rhine north of Mannheim, the courts of two archbishop-
electors bear mention: that of Mainz, where Johann Zach (1699–
1773) and later J.F.X. Sterkel (1750–1817) were active, and Koblenz,
where J.G. Lang (1722–98) matched his important output of
keyboard concertos with 40 rather italianate symphonies, six of
which were published in Augsburg in 1760.
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10. The Habsburg monarchy: Vienna, Salzburg.
The traditional position of Vienna as a crossroads in European
civilization stimulated a host of special achievements. In the 18th
century the web of cultural influence spread unusually wide, owing
to the vast reach of the Habsburg Monarchy, and the resulting
confluence of talent brought an incomparable richness of ideas and
creative activity to bear on the evolution of the symphony. Mannheim
and Paris may have exceeded Vienna in brilliance of musical
performance, but the imperial capital drew together an
unprecedented number of musician-composers, attracted by an
unsurpassed degree of patronage: in addition to the Habsburg court,
literally hundreds of noble families supported musical
establishments, generally dividing their time between Vienna and
their ancestral estates in Austria, the Czech lands, Hungary and
farther afield. The aristocracy also provided the principal audience
for public concerts in Vienna, which grew ever more important
during the second half of the century. In such a climate of
opportunity every talent could prosper, every musical genre flourish.
The early Viennese symphony reveals the potent influence of three

genres identified strongly with the Austrian Baroque. The first of
these is opera and such related types as the serenata. Viennese
opera overtures in the period 1700–40 cover a vast range of types,
including French overtures of various kinds, polychoral works with
as many as eight trumpets, concerti grossi, one- and two-movement
overtures, and standard three-movement Italian types. It is the latter
that furnished, together with the northern Italian symphony, the
principal model for the concert symphony in Vienna. While the
majority of such overtures have first movements that use ritornello
procedures, without repeat signs, a substantial minority have binary
first movements, providing a near-perfect parallel with the early
Viennese concert symphony; a well-known example is Francesco
Conti’s overture to Pallade trionfante of 1722, one of his ten
overtures with binary opening movements. During the 1740s and
50s this type of overture became especially frequent, for example in
the works of Wagenseil (see below); this tended to encourage their
transfer from opera house to concert. In a more general sense as
well, the influence of Italian opera persisted in Vienna throughout
the 18th century. The characteristic Viennese feeling for
recapitulation surely owes something to the long exposure to
operatic ritornello and da capo. Equally important, the operatic aria
had made important advances in the development of Classical
melodic and phrase structure. And finally, many Viennese
symphonies after c1760 represent either wholly or in part an
adaptation of opera buffa style to a work for orchestra; one is
reminded of the close connections between Mozart’s Le nozze di
Figaro and the Prague Symphony K504, to give only one example.
Page 23 of 94
Two other genres important to the early Viennese symphony were
the church sonata and the parthia or partita and related types (see
Larsen, 1994). The former, often played with doubled parts, was the
one of the sources (together with the French overture) for the many
fugal movements in Austrian symphonies, as well as of four-
movement cycles beginning with an Adagio or Largo; while the
latter, which mixed abstract and dance movements and could be
soloistic or orchestral, provided a model for the insertion of dance
movements within the normal overture cycle, leading eventually to
the four-movement symphony.
Interestingly, the 25 symphonies a 4 of one of the earliest Viennese

composers of symphonies, the court organist W.R. Birck or Pirck
(1718–63), follow precisely the typology just outlined: they consist of
diminutive three-movement symphonies (in all but one case with
binary first movements), church-sonata types with fugal second
movements, and three early examples of the standard four-
movement cycle with minuet and trio. More uniform are the many
symphonies of Ignaz Holzbauer written before his departure from
Vienna in 1750 (see above under Mannheim, §9) and those of his
slightly younger contemporaries M.G. Monn, G.C. Wagenseil and J.P.
Ziegler. As already pointed out in the discussion of the four-
movement symphony (see above, §5), a work by Monn (1717–50)
including a minuet and dated 1740 has been treated as a turning-
point by scholars supporting Austrian primacy. But the score, an
autograph, does not in fact label the work a symphony (it is so
designated only in a notation by Aloys Fuchs, who owned the
manuscript), and the extensive wind solos, the placement of all the
movements in one key and the inclusion of a dance movement relate
the work more closely to the Austrian parthia or serenade tradition
than to the remainder of Monn’s symphonies, all of which are in
three movements. While generally conservative, Monn’s symphonies
show a sensitivity to line and a notable feeling for harmony, both in
his choice of unusual tonalities and his expressive use of dissonance.
Sonata forms predominate in the first movements, sometimes with
clear, moderately lyrical secondary themes in the dominant minor
that are then recapitulated in the tonic minor (a characteristic
Viennese trait from the 1740s to the early 1760s, borrowed from the
Italian opera overture); but numerous variants occur as well, such as
ritornello or binary-sonata forms.
Wagenseil (1715–77), a prolific composer more in touch with the full

spectrum of Viennese musical life, began his career in the mid-1740s
as a composer of Italian operas for the Viennese court. Their
overtures and, later, Wagenseil’s independent concert symphonies
were published both in France and England. With one or two
possible exceptions, all are in three movements, though still small in
dimension, mostly with a fast 3/8 or ‘Tempo di Menuet’ finale.
Wagenseil’s first movements, though still small in dimension, are
typically Viennese in their firm grasp of the principle of
recapitulation. Rhythmic vigour and a strong sense of continuity give
an immediate appeal to many of his symphonies, but he rarely
Page 24 of 94
escaped the emphases characteristic of works of the period: his snap
rhythms, frequent syncopations, sweeping upbeats and quick turns
enliven the individual beat, but the grouping of beats into larger
units – sub-phrases and phrases – lacks profile and may involve
merely a chain of repeated beats without differentiation. This
combination of small-scale, repetitious motivic material and strong
rhythmic continuity tends to work against thematic contrast, and
many of Wagenseil’s expositions, though clear in tonal-textural
outlines, lack a correspondingly clear thematic organisation.
The second generation of Viennese symphonists begins with Karl von

d’Ordonez (1734–86), who composed more than 70 symphonies, a
substantial majority (about 75%) in three movements. Four of the
latter open with a slow introduction connected to a following
Allegro; these may be related to a four-movement symphony of his in
the Göttweig monastery (A-GÖ), dated 1756, which begins with a
slow movement (ed. in Brown, 1979). The second movement of the
1756 symphony (marked Allegro molto), like several of the first
movements from Ordonez’s early period, could be considered
formally either a ritornello-influenced variant of sonata form without
repeats or, perhaps less anachronistically, a tri-ritornello structure
with clearly contrasting secondary material. Otherwise, his opening
movements rarely depart from standard Viennese sonata
procedures, including in the earlier works the frequent placement of
the secondary theme in the dominant minor. Stylistically Ordonez’s
symphonies tend to rely more upon rhythmic activity than melodic
suavity, and contrapuntal texture, including imitation at the outset of
a work, is not uncommon. As an orchestrator, Ordonez can claim
credit as one of the few symphonists of the 18th century to give a
prominent solo passage to the viola (with pizzicato accompaniment),
the cantabile opening theme of a slow movement from the early
1760s (Brown B♭ 6).
The slightly older composer F.L. Gassmann (1729–74) made his

reputation as an opera composer in Venice and later served as
Kapellmeister to the Viennese court. In Gassmann’s concert
symphonies, all or most of which date from the 1760s, more of the
operatic lyricism carries over than in Wagenseil, even affecting
vigorous fast movements. Gassmann experimented constantly with
first-movement form, using shapes ranging from binary-sonata forms
to rather sophisticated thematic plans in which the transitional,
secondary and closing materials are each variants of the primary
theme yet at the same time preserve their characteristic functions.
Also exemplifying this fluid conception of form are a number of
works with recapitulations beginning in the subdominant or
submediant.
In other details of style Gassmann’s most striking talent is his

control of rhythmic outline, both as a means of creating a smooth
rise and fall of activity in the phrase and as a way of building
excitement when approaching a point of climax. His management of
orchestration and texture, especially his careful deployment of
Page 25 of 94
partial tuttis and mixed groups with cello or even viola serving as
the bass, reflects an awareness of the broad objectives of each
movement. Another composer worth mentioning in the Ordonez-
Gassmann generation is the violinist and ballet composer Franz
Asplmayr (1728–86), who composed over 40 symphonies.
Apart from Haydn and Mozart, the highest achievements in the

Viennese Classical symphony – an opinion shared, incidentally, by
Charles Burney (BurneyGN, 124) – were those of a trio of prolific,
gifted composers who were nearly exact contemporaries: Leopold
Hofmann, Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf and J.B. Vanhal. The sources
for the symphonies of Hofmann (1738–93), most of whose output
falls into the 1760s, are second in number only to those of Haydn
and Pleyel in European archives – a significant measure of
contemporary popularity. Like Haydn during this period, Hofmann
employed a wide variety of movement cycles. While about half of his
approximately 50 symphonies are in normal three-movement form,
at least 20 turn to the four-movement pattern that was soon to
become standard in Vienna; several of the latter date from at least as
early as 1759–60, making him one of the first Viennese symphonists
to adopt this plan. Notable among the four-movement works are two
with slow introductions, one of which is dated 1762 in the Göttweig
catalogue; together with Haydn’s Symphonies nos.6–7 of 1761, these
are the earliest known instances of standard four-movement
symphonies with slow introductions. Other cycles found in both
Hofmann and Haydn, already seen in Ordonez, include three
movements with slow introduction and four movements in the slow–
fast–slow–fast pattern of the church sonata.
Though only slightly younger than Gassmann and Ordonez, Hofmann

matured at the right time to exploit the new internal coordination
and larger phase units characteristic of the full Classical style. As a
result, his sonata structures and thematic types leave an impression
of both clarity and a firm sense of functional differentiation. Much of
his music has a pre-Mozartian smoothness, extending even to lyrical
allegro themes. In view of his convincing style and the wide
distribution of his music, there is little doubt that Hofmann’s four-
movement symphonies exercised a strong influence on the evolution
of the symphonic form.
Dittersdorf (1739–99) was the most prolific symphonist of the second

half of the century; he wrote over 120. Although one expects (and
finds) many recurrent formulae, there is also much genuine
invention and instinctively good structure. The large-scale movement
of his line is convincing, and he was equally skilful in a brisk Allegro
or a sophisticated cantabile with smoothly balanced phrases. There
are many small niceties of thematic relationship and development,
using techniques such as imitation (never long pursued), diminution,
augmentation and recombination of motifs. On occasion, like Haydn,
he could simulate (or perhaps remember) a catchy peasant tune to
fit a rustic mood. Also like Haydn, Dittersdorf introduced many
touches of the specialized musical humour that results from phrase
Page 26 of 94
extensions or truncations, displaced accents or other bar-line
manoeuvres. On the other hand, there is often a lack of rhythmic
variety in the lower parts, and the bar-to-bar harmony is rarely
imaginative.
Possibly because of his success in dramatic music, Dittersdorf began

early on to give descriptive titles to symphonies, including a seven-
movement work describing the humours of mankind (before 1771)
and a series based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses (c1782). Though these
can be considered remote ancestors of the 19th-century
programmatic symphony, they contain scarcely more actual
description than the touches that gave Haydn’s Paris symphonies
their nicknames – Actaeon, transformed into a stag, jumping in a 6/8
‘tempo di caccia’, or the croaking of the farmers changed into frogs.
From the musical standpoint these are among Dittersdorf’s least
interesting works; more successful is a Sinfonia nazionale nel gusto
di cinque nazioni (1767) with movements intended to reflect
German, Italian, English, French and Turkish taste.
Dittersdorf’s contemporary, Vanhal (1739–1813), with symphonies

published in London, Paris, Berlin, The Hague and Amsterdam as
well as a large corpus of manuscript sources, was unusually popular
in northern Europe. All his symphonies were composed in the period
c1760–80. Although they are soundly constructed, with attractive,
well-contrasted themes and skilful formal techniques, the real
reason for their popularity may be their frequent quality of pathos,
as reflected in their exceptional number of minor tonalities and their
broad spectrum of expression, which ranges from melancholy
introspection to fiery tragedy. Five of Vanhal’s minor-key symphonies
call for four horns – as in Haydn’s Symphony no.39 and Mozart’s G
minor Symphony K183, tuned a minor third apart as a means of
coping with the modulation to the relative major – and another adds
a fifth horn tuned a perfect 5th above the tonic. With this exception,
Vanhal was not particularly experimental, and he made no particular
contribution to the evolving symphonic convention. But more than
Hofmann or Dittersdorf, he seems to parallel Haydn in the ability to
make his music move in a tight process of continuation, with each
phrase containing, as it were, the genetic code for its successor.
There is also a kinship with Mozart in the italianate lyricism of his
later works and in the occasional use of gentle, retrospective closing
themes that interpolate a moment of quiet before the entry of the
cadential trumpets.
In addition to Haydn and Mozart, the most important and prolific

composers of symphonies in Vienna from c1780 to 1800, the date of
Beethoven’s First Symphony, were the composer and publisher F.A.
Hoffmeister (1754–1812) and the two Bohemians Paul Wranitzky
(1756–1808) and Adalbert Gyrowetz (1763–1850). For the most part
their works are content to represent the high Classical tradition of
Mozart in well-wrought, melodically accessible works rather than to
break new or controversial ground.
Page 27 of 94
The prince-bishopric of Salzburg has only recently gained attention
as a centre of symphony composition, both for its intrinsic
importance and for its role in Mozart’s compositional development
(Eisen, 1994). Among symphonists active in Salzburg, the most
important during the middle decades of the century was Leopold
Mozart (1719–87), who arrived in 1746 as a court violinist and
became Vice-Kapellmeister in 1763. Both formally and stylistically
his symphonies trace the same overall evolutionary path as those of
the imperial capital. However, he had begun using a four-movement
cycle on occasion by about 1750, earlier than in Vienna; his
preferred sequence of movements placed the minuet and trio in
second rather than third place, a practice found in most of Haydn’s
quartets from op.9 through op.33 and in five of his symphonies.
Leopold’s symphonies are also up-to-date in their use of clearly
differentiated secondary themes; like the Viennese, during the same
period, he often places them in the dominant minor, recapitulating
them in the tonic minor.
Leopold Mozart evidently wrote few if any symphonies after his

promotion in 1763, which was also the date at which Joseph Haydn’s
younger brother Michael (1737–1806) arrived in Salzburg as
Konzertmeister and court composer. Trained in Vienna, where he
may have written a few of his earliest symphonies, his style belongs
more to that school than elsewhere. Yet as with Leopold Mozart,
there are certain qualities that set him apart. In the first place, in
many of his works there is an almost Baroque rhythmic continuity
with many similar note-values – bar after bar of quavers, for
example; in similarly continuous and undifferentiated passages, his
brother Joseph would typically find ways of punctuating and
regulating the flow by harmonic or textural means. Another
somewhat old-fashioned characteristic in Michael’s music is both
welcome and more successful in the Classical context: the frequent
use of contrapuntal textures and devices, which lend unusual
interest to many of his movements. Even his latest symphonies, from
1788–9, contain several fugal finales (as the last movement of three).
Michael’s music is also impressive for the richness of its harmony,
which features not only unusual modulations and the dramatic
placement of remote chords, but also sinuously chromatic lines
reminiscent of passages in Mozart; it is difficult to know who
influenced whom.
Any discussion of the symphony in Austria should also refer to the

active role of the great Austrian monasteries such as Göttweig,
Melk, Kremsmünster and Lambach in fostering both the
performance and composition of symphonies (see Freeman and
Meckna, 1982), a role magnificently illustrated by the huge
collections of instrumental music extant at each. Of numerous monks
who composed symphonies, the most important was probably
Amandus Ivanschiz (fl 1755–70), whose 20-odd symphonies from
approximately the 1760s generally reflect contemporaneous
Viennese trends, including clear sonata forms (in this case with or
without repeats) and the frequent use of four movements.
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11. Paris.
In the second half of the 18th century Paris was the leading
European centre of musical performance and publishing, but not of
symphonic composition. The surprising total of more than 1000
works compiled by Brook must be seen in the light of his inclusion of
works in the Symphonie concertante form, a type of multiple
concerto rather than a symphony in the modern sense of the term.
The earliest French symphonies show an obvious, and often

acknowledged, debt to Italian symphonists such as Sammartini and
Brioschi, whose works were well known in Paris in both manuscript
and printed form; the famous Fonds Blancheton, for example, a large
collection of manuscript instrumental music assembled c1740,
contains dozens of works by each composer (La Laurencie, 1930–
31). The publication in 1740 of VI simphonies dans le goût italien en
trio op.6 of L.G. Guillemain (1705–70) places the beginnings of the
native Parisian symphony in a chronology closely parallel to that of
Vienna and Mannheim. The ‘Italian taste’ mentioned in this title (and
repeated in Guillemain’s op.14, 1748) probably refers to the use of a
three-movement cycle and to the insistent quality of beat-marking
quaver and semiquaver rhythms in a texture that moves freely
between homophony and quasi-contrapuntal three-part writing. In
addition, while the consistent one- and two-bar units give a less
motivic feeling than in early works of Monn and Wagenseil, the exact
piano repetition of many bars evokes the tutti-solo echoes of the
Baroque concerto. These retrospective details, however, do not
outweigh the generally up-to-date impression contributed by the
relatively clear differentiation of primary, secondary and closing
material (with matching punctuation provided not only by rests but
by slower chord and surface rhythm); by the fresh treatment of
derived material in developments, which are occasionally longer
than their respective expositions; and by the full, literal
recapitulations.
A decade later François Martin (ii) (1727–57) published six works

with a title as suggestive as that of Guillemain, his Simphonies et
ouvertures op.4 (1751). Here the ouvertures are French overtures
with slow introductions followed by fugal allegros, while the
symphonies are of the usual three-movement Italian type. This raises
doubts as to whether, as Landon and others have suggested, the
slow introduction of the Classical symphony derives from the
opening Grave of the French overture. As Martin’s (and others’)
usage shows, there is a clear separation between the two genres and
little chronological continuity between the French overture at its
height and the mature symphony with slow introduction. Indeed, the
few slow introductions in French symphonies of the period sound
quite unlike the opening sections of French overtures.
The long, productive life of F.-J. Gossec (1734–1829), the most

important composer of the Parisian group of symphonists, did much
to establish and maintain the strength of the French symphony. In
Page 29 of 94
his first six works, op.3 (1756), Italian influence is evident in snap
rhythms and obvious triadic themes; all these symphonies are in
three movements, and all but the last, which adds two oboe parts,
are scored for strings a 4. By op.4 (c1758) Gossec had assimilated
most features of the mature Classical symphony, including
Mannheim dynamic effects and the use of a four-movement cycle,
the latter with well-planned sonata form in many slow movements
and finales as well as first movements. Here and in op.5 (c1761–2)
he paralleled Viennese developments in the clear divisions and
explicit thematic contrast of his sonata forms. However, his fast
movements generally omit double bars and repeat signs, a
procedure that again shows the influence of the Mannheim
symphonies popular at the time in Paris (and was later adopted by
Mozart in his Paris Symphony K297).
With the broad sweep of his melodic lines and the telling use of
warm harmonic touches, particularly diminished 7ths, Gossec
created a personal style recognizable even among the hundreds of
contemporaneous works. His frequently asymmetrical treatment of
phrasing brought charges from the critics that he imitated Haydn. In
other respects as well, Gossec’s symphonies maintained a high level
and serious tone, noticeable in the large proportion of works in
minor keys and in the frequency of well-worked textures with clean-
lined counterpoint. On these points his works stand out against the
characteristically facile tone of many later Parisian symphonies.
Beginning with op.6 (c1762), he moved away from the four-
movement plan and frequently introduced unusual instrumental
combinations and unconventional designs, including the use of fugal
movements.
In the bustling cosmopolitanism of Paris, it was difficult for the

French symphony to maintain a strong national identity in the
second half of the century. First came the invasion from Mannheim,
whose virtuosos brought the brilliantly effective new style to Paris on
their visits; as already noted, it found a congenial reception in the
symphonies of Gossec. As the capital of the performing world, Paris
continued to attract countless foreign musician-composers, many of
them respectable symphonists. In addition, the flourishing Parisian
publishing industry found that the most marketable composer of
symphonies was Joseph Haydn. Although in the latter part of the
century a separate French style cannot often be recognized, the
excellent models available to Parisian composers and the stiff
competition from foreign talent led to many works of high quality.
The Italian influence noted in early Parisian symphonies received

further impetus from the arrival of the Roman flautist-composer
Filippo Ruge (c1725–after 1767), who not only composed but
brought numerous Italian works with him. His symphonies contain
early examples of programmatic titles (op.1 no.4, finale, ‘La
tempesta’, 1756). A more important immigrant composer was Henri-
Joseph Rigel (1741–99), whose 14 extant symphonies show notable
thematic inspiration and strong harmonic pathos in slow movements.
Page 30 of 94
Born in Germany and influenced by the Mannheim group, he wrote
three-movement symphonies that typify the Parisian style about
1770. Opening with appealing, neatly articulated melodies, the
movements unfold smoothly owing to the composer’s mastery of
phrase formation and connection. The range of thematic types in
each work adds a vitality that easily explains his popularity at the
time.
Another prominent foreign composer in Paris was Carl Stamitz

(1745–1801), Johann’s eldest son. Carl moved to Paris in 1770 from
Mannheim, producing a massive amount of instrumental music there
before eventually departing in the early 1780s. Born nearly at mid-
century, he inherited the full range of Classical structural
procedures, from advanced thematic specialization in his sonata
forms to a fully developed phrase syntax. His thematic material
combines soundly balanced line and rhythm with a less easily
described melodic charm. Probably owing to his rapid rate of
production, Stamitz occasionally fell victim to an overuse of clichés
such as the ubiquitous ‘sigh’, yet even the presence of clichés does
not spoil the polished succession of phrases and periods. Some of his
finest expression comes in his slow movements, where he managed
to introduce a surprising amount of counterpoint without distracting
attention from his long, singing upper line.
After about 1770 the symphonie concertante occupied the principal

attention of many native Parisian composers, many of whom wrote
almost exclusively in the new genre. One who did not was Simon Le
Duc l’aîné (1742–77), but he lived too short a time to develop his
early promise, leaving only three symphonies (1776–7) in addition to
three earlier orchestral trios. Like Gossec he commands attention
first by his rhythmic force, but he goes beyond the older composer in
his more highly developed ability to support rhythmic fluctuations
with appropriate orchestration and chord rhythm. At a higher level,
the variety of Le Duc’s phrase rhythms recalls Haydn’s imaginative
treatments.
A Haydn pupil, Ignace Pleyel (1757–1831), became the outstanding

composer of the last phase of the Parisian symphony, with a large
body of works extending from the early 1780s to the first years of
the 19th century. Pleyel reintroduced the four-movement cycle, often
with slow introductions (also found in a few late works of Gossec).
He also made several notable innovations, such as the insertion of a
quick episode in a slow movement or the addition of a short bridge
between trio and returning minuet (as in Haydn’s Symphony no.104
and others). Exceedingly facile in generating thematic variants, he
sometimes expanded a development to as many as three episodes.
His orchestration invariably fits the musical material aptly, and he
approached strings, woodwind and brass not merely as blocks of
sound but as flexible combinations, for example using a single
woodwind with strings or viola as bass for a thematic woodwind
passage.
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12. London.
Until about 1760 the history of the symphony in England is almost
exclusively the history of the overture, which was routinely detached
for performance and publication from the vocal work it preceded.
Indeed, until the end of the century ‘overture’ was the routine term
for what elsewhere was known as a symphony. From the end of the
17th century the French overture had provided the model for most
overtures, and Handel’s preference for that type in both his operas
and oratorios was a strong factor in its continued use. Charles
Cudworth’s research has shown that, beginning with the overture to
Francesco Mancini’s Hydaspe fedele of 1710, the fast–slow–fast
pattern of the Italian sinfonia gained ever-increasing significance.
Yet of T.A. Arne’s Eight Overtures in 8 Parts, published in 1751, six
are still in French-overture form. Similarly, in William Boyce’s Eight
Symphonys in Eight Parts op.2 (1760, but including works dating
back to 1739), five of the first movements are in French overture
form or a form obviously derived from it. Only in these composers’
works of the 1760s, especially the independent symphonies of Arne’s
Four New Overtures or Symphonies (1767), do galant tendencies
begin to manifest themselves in any substantial fashion.
Through many centuries London had enriched its musical life by

offering hospitality to continental musicians, and again it was two
émigrés who made the most substantial contributions to the English
symphony, at a time when Paris was also experiencing a wave of
foreign influence. C.F. Abel and J.C. Bach arrived in London in 1759
and 1762 respectively, soon joining forces to produce the Bach-Abel
concerts, a series decisive for the development of Classical
orchestral music in England. Abel (1723–87), best known as a viola
da gamba virtuoso, published six extremely popular sets of
symphonies, all in three movements, some with minuet finales of the
mid-century Italian type. A careful craftsman, he wrote symphonies
with energetic movement, clearly punctuated form and deftly woven
texture. His advanced thematic construction, with well-balanced
statement–response phrases, led to greater differentiation and more
logical development. Though Abel’s symphonies often sound more
competent than inspired, in his slow movements there are some
beautiful long lines and graceful chromatic appoggiaturas of a kind
later called ‘Mozartian’.
J.C. Bach (1735–82) was scrupulously trained by his elder brother

Emanuel and by Padre Martini. His symphonies also reflect a wealth
of his own operatic experience – gained in part in Italy before his
arrival in London – in the exceptional lyricism of both his Andante
movements and many of his Allegro themes. No one before Mozart
seems to have understood as well as he how to underline the curve
of a superb melody with a suitable ebb and flow of harmony and
surface rhythm. At the same time, many skilful small imitations in
the bass or inner parts lend added charm to the texture, again
recalling Mozart’s effortless devices. Even more important, Bach
used this control to make small connections between subphrases,
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phrases and sentences, developing the musical equivalents of
commas, semicolons and full stops (though his phrase hierarchy may
nonetheless seem four-square when judged by the standards of later
Mozart). Bach’s combination of imagination and technical mastery
made possible a wide variety and subtle gradation of thematic ideas,
which he then distinguished according to expositional functions:
even out of context his themes sound like primary, transitional,
secondary or closing material.
The younger generation of mature British composers started out

well with the Six Symphonies op.1 (1761) of Thomas Erskine, Earl of
Kelly (1732–81), probably the first independent concert symphonies
to be published in England. Erskine, a pupil of Johann Stamitz, had
obviously learnt something of his mentor’s rhythmic drive, dynamic
orchestral treatment and use of thematic contrast. John Collett’s op.
2 (1766) contains the only English four-movement symphony of the
time; but before the minuet a note is printed stating, ‘Either or both
of the following movements to be played’, a clear indication of the
insecure status of the four-movement cycle in England. The small
works of William Smethergell (op.2, c1778; op.5, c1790) recall at
times the symphonies of the second Mannheim generation,
especially in their opening gestures, but his forms are too brief to
take full advantage of the Mannheim achievements. Perhaps the
ablest of the younger British composers was J.A. Fisher (1744–1806),
whose Six Simphonies in Eight Parts (1772), again extremely short,
show sensitive and knowledgeable orchestral writing, including
bassoon solos and an early use, for printed music, of triple piano.
John Marsh (1752–1828) moved away from the small proportions
characteristic of his contemporaries, later writing several four-
movement symphonies and considerably enlarging the individual
movements; his inventive Conversation Sinfonie (1784) exploits the
idea of a dialogue between two small orchestras, doubtless in
imitation of the three double-orchestra symphonies of J.C. Bach’s op.
18. However, the native production of symphonies in the latter part
of the century remained slim. The major contribution of London at
the time may be considered not symphonies as such but the London
audience of ‘connoisseurs and amateurs’ whose appreciation and
support drew forth the greatest works of J.C. Bach and Haydn.
13. Other centres.

The rapid growth of the symphony as a central orchestral genre may
be seen in the speed with which it gained popularity in more
peripheral areas such as the Netherlands and Sweden. Amsterdam,
for example, was treated to a public concert as early as 1738 that
included symphonies by Sammartini and Agrell. (There is no
evidence, however, for the frequent claim that this concert was
conducted by Vivaldi; see Rasch, 1993.) A notable early composer of
symphonies identified with various cities of the Netherlands was the
somewhat elusive figure A.W. Solnitz (c1708–1752/3), who published
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12 symphonies a 4 in Amsterdam c1739 and another set of six in the
1750s. These show many galant traits but no influence of the
Mannheim style (as has been asserted). Somewhat later the vigorous
concert life and music publishing trade of the Netherlands attracted
the peripatetic symphonist Friedrich Schwindl (1737–86), who was
active not only in The Hague but also in Germany, Zürich and
Brussels. In turn, Brussels fostered the extensive symphonic output
of Pierre van Maldere (1729–68), violinist-composer to Charles of
Lorraine, who wrote symphonies good enough to be confused with
Haydn’s.
Like the Netherlands, Sweden boasted a lively concert life in

addition to the musical activities of the court. In part for that reason
it, too, was an early centre of symphonic production in the form of
some 30 symphonies by J.H. Roman (1694–1758). Most are for
strings alone, though some are a 6 or a 8. Three movements are
standard, but four-movement works in successions such as fast–
slow–fast–fast are also common. Roman’s symphonies, possibly
dating from as early as the late 1730s, are in a solid, well-crafted
late Baroque idiom that nonetheless admits many galant
characteristics. Later in the century Sweden was host to J.M. Kraus
(1756–92), who emigrated from Germany to become the greatly
admired Kapellmeister to Gustavus III. His symphonies, many of
which are lost, rank with some of the best of the time and were
greatly admired by Haydn. They are particularly notable for their
rich harmony and texture, which contribute to their often deeply
expressive character; outstanding examples are his Symphonie
funèbre on the death of Gustavus III and his Symphony in C♯ later
extensively revised (see Brown, 1990).
Finally, two outstanding Classical symphonists lived in Madrid: Luigi

Boccherini (1743–1805) and Gaetano Brunetti (1744–98). The
symphonies of both fall almost entirely into the period 1770–90. The
attractions of Boccherini’s melodies have led many writers to
overlook his fine control of other musical opportunities: his handling
of rhythmic details as well as phrasing gives a sophisticated
impression of both vigour and wit. His themes may reflect familiar
italianate lyricism, but he often adds intensity by use of large-scale
linear planning that embraces several four- or eight-bar phrases; and
in his concern for the inner parts he seems to have inherited his
compatriot Sammartini’s understanding of coordinated polyphony as
a way of enhancing texture without losing thematic control. In the
realm of large-scale form, several of his symphonies make use of
cyclic procedures, for example the quotation of material from the
opening movement in subsequent ones or the enfolding of one
movement within another.
Brunetti’s highly original symphonies present a rather different

picture: they include a number of stormy works with an unusually
high proportion of minor tonalities matched by abrupt rhythms and
jagged melodic lines. His music is effective in performance and
appealing for its Haydnesque rhythmic verve and taut continuity.
After six early three-movement ‘overtures’ from 1772, his
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symphonies use a unique four-movement plan in which the third
movement reverses the usual minuet–trio–minuet sequence,
consisting of a woodwind ‘quintetto’ (usually not in minuet style)
followed by a contrasting section for full orchestra and then a return
of the quintetto. This scheme adds interest to the penultimate
movement of the cycle, perhaps a bit whimsically, and lends the first
tutti of the finale an additional impact.
14. Haydn and Mozart.

Because of the long span of time that Haydn and Mozart each
devoted to symphonic composition, as well as the number, quality
and scope of their works, the symphony must certainly be
considered one of the most important and representative genres that
they employed. Their achievements go far beyond those of any of the
local groupings suggested above, but in curiously opposite ways.
Mozart assimilated procedures from many sources besides Austrian
ones, most notably from Italy and Mannheim, elevating, enriching
and often expanding the original idea or scheme. Haydn, although he
spoke of playing other music to stimulate his own ideas, in fact
extended and intensified his own procedures more than he
developed or refined processes gleaned from others.
(i) Haydn.
With nearly 40 years of composing symphonies, Haydn exceeds most
other composers of the period in seniority. His symphonies are now
generally considered to number 106: the usual 104 plus two early
works now designated as nos.107 and 108. (The traditional
numbering, dating from 1907, is often highly inaccurate
chronologically, especially for the early works; for the most
authoritative recent treatment of the dating of Haydn’s symphonies
see Gerlach, 1996.) It is difficult to arrange Haydn’s prodigious
output in periods, because the similarities between chronologically
adjacent symphonies often seem less noteworthy than their
differences and individualities. In general, his works reflect the
circumstances of their composition. As a young man he worked for
small establishments, with only modest orchestral forces at his
disposal; this is reflected in his earliest symphonies, although his
basic approach can already be perceived in the overture-like no.1,
dating from c1757–8. During this period and in the years just after
his appointment at the Esterházy court in 1761, Haydn wrote in
more different symphonic types and styles than at any other time,
including works with extensive concertante elements, canon, fugal
finales and suggestions of the church sonata in their tempo
arrangement or use of cantus firmus technique. These different
styles should not be regarded merely as experiments but as
responses to changing requirements, probably including
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performance in church. In later years, too, Haydn responded to
special challenges with unusually imaginative solutions, as in the
hilarious ‘Il distratto’ (no.60, c1774), whose six movements were
originally written as incidental music for a comedy, or in the
‘Hornsignal’ (no.31, 1765), a brilliant example of concertante (and
incidentally cyclic) treatment that incorporates various horn calls
(the title, like most such titles in Haydn, did not originate with the
composer).
Haydn’s earliest symphonies show a preponderance of three-

movement cycles, though from the beginning he gave his symphonic
finales more weight and interest than those of the typical opera
overture. In the course of this period Haydn began increasingly to
use four-movement plans of the types already noted in other
Austrian symphonists: fast–minuet/trio–slow–fast (nos.32, 37 and 108
of c1757–62, and later nos.44 and 68; see also no.15, with a
composite slow–fast–slow movement in place of the opening fast
movement); slow–fast–minuet/trio–fast (nos.5, 11, 21, 22 and 34 of
c1760–64, and later no.49; see also no.18 of c1757–9, with the
sequence slow–fast–Tempo di Minuetto); and finally the standard
later cycle, fast–slow–minuet/trio–fast (beginning with nos.3, 6–8 –
the trilogy ‘Le matin’, ‘Le midi’ and Le soir’ – and 14, 20, 33 and 36
of c1758–62). Nos.6–7 are among the earliest known four-movement
symphonies to incorporate a slow introduction, that of no.6 (‘Le
matin’) representing a rather abbreviated sunrise (see also no.25 of
c1760–61, in which the extended slow introduction, obviously
related to the independent opening Adagio movements of the same
period, precedes a three-movement fast–minuet/trio–fast cycle).
However, Haydn did not use this pattern again until the 1770s (nos.
50, 53, 54, 57 of 1773–4; nos.71, 73, 75 of c1778–81), and it did not
become standard for him until after 1785. Later in Haydn’s career
came various large-scale refinements and innovations that were
important for later composers. These include the introduction of
thematic links between the slow introduction and the following fast
movement (nos.90, 98, 102–3); the development and exploitation of a
wide range of variation forms in slow movements, including
alternating or double variations (beginning with nos.53, 63 and 70 in
the late 1770s) and effective combinations of the variation, rondo
and sonata principles (see Sisman, 1993); the connection of minuet
and trio by means of a transition after the trio (nos.50, 99, 104); and
the extensive use of sonata-rondo finales (the best-known examples
are those of nos.88, 94, 99 and 101–3).
Haydn’s position with Prince Esterházy required a steady production

of symphonies for immediate performance, providing a unique
opportunity for creation and self-criticism. Within the general
framework just described, Haydn now began an internal expansion,
enlarging his thematic ideas, working out new means of
development, evolving more remote tonal excursions and extracting
the most effective and varied sounds from a group that often
numbered less than 20. The remarkable number of fine symphonies
that resulted show numerous characteristic procedures, among them
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the construction of much of the exposition from a single thematic
idea, with contrast often deferred to the closing area; the constant
exploitation of the unexpected, unpredictable because the source of
surprise changes in each work; and the creation of a clear zone of
climax to lend profile and character to the development section.
Especially important are two seemingly opposed processes. The first
is phrase extension (a b b¹ b² etc.), so that four bars may become
seven or eleven. The second is compression by means of phrase
elision, which causes the new phrase to arrive a bar earlier than
expected; clear examples from early and late in Haydn’s career are
the primary themes of the first movements of no.8, based on a Gluck
ariette in praise of tobacco (see Heartz, 1984, 1995), and no.104.
These opposite processes, extension and compression, both serve to
induce a state of rhythmic tension or uncertainty that contributes
substantially to Haydn’s sense of movement.
Numerous biographers have identified a period of ‘Sturm und Drang’

in Haydn’s life in the second half of the 1760s and the early 1770s.
Storm and stress can certainly be recognized in the powerful minor-
mode symphonies of the period (nos.26, 39, 44, 45, 49 and 52), but
this colourful interpretation neglects the fact that works in the minor
still represent a distinct minority during this period. Moreover, the
implied relationship (causal or otherwise) between the symphonies
in question and the German literary movement known as the Sturm
und Drang rests on shaky chronological grounds, since the latter is
associated primarily with the mid-1770s and later, after Haydn’s
(and others’) principal contributions to this style.
Beginning in 1776, probably because of his heavy new operatic

responsibilities, Haydn’s activity in the symphony seems to have
reached a temporary plateau; his rate of production declined
somewhat, and a number of these works seem somewhat neutral in
character despite their mastery of the symphonic idiom. Though
some writers have viewed this period in a negative light (e.g.
Landon, 1955), it was during precisely this time that Haydn shaped
many of the characteristic features of his late symphonic style,
including the use of variation slow movements, rondo finales, and
sophisticated new approaches in the realms of texture, harmony,
form and orchestration. These symphonies also show numerous
direct connections with stage or opera: nos.50, 53, 60, 62, 63, 73
and possibly 67, for example, incorporate movements from Haydn’s
opera overtures (Fisher, 1985).
The culmination of Haydn’s achievements as a symphonist came in

the years 1785–95. A Paris commission of 1785 resulted in six new
symphonies (nos.82–7, the ‘Paris’ Symphonies) for the Concert de la
Loge Olympique, followed by nos.88 and 89 (the ‘Tost’ symphonies,
1787) and 90–92 (the ‘Comte d’Ogny’ or ‘Oettingen-Wallerstein’
symphonies, 1788). In these works Haydn reached new heights of
ingenuity, humour and unpretentious intellectuality, the last chiefly
in matters of development and thematic relationship (see especially
no.88). Later the London trips of 1791–2 and 1794–5 each yielded
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two series of six symphonies, nos.93–8 and 99–104, that equal those
of the preceding groups in all those qualities and exceed them in
breadth of conception, melodic appeal, orchestral brilliance and
magisterial but never pompous dignity.
Haydn was an innovator in all directions. Nearly every symphony

contains ideas of a variety that defies categorization. Two recurrent
but constantly changing procedures give some insight into his
methods. First, by treating the phrase less as a goal in itself than as
a part of larger rhythmic groupings (sentence, paragraph), he
generated an unusually broad rhythmic control, to which his
frequent elision techniques also contributed. Second, by extending
the developmental process to encompass both the exposition and
recapitulation, the latter often substantially recomposed rather than
merely restating the material of the former (see Wolf, 1966), he
demonstrated revolutionary potentialities in sonata form. These
ideas exercised a major influence on Beethoven.
The scope of Haydn’s imagination can only be hinted at by reference

to a few representative examples. His famous dynamic surprises
(e.g. the ff tutti entrance in the slow movement of the ‘Surprise’
Symphony, no.94, or the characteristic ‘thunderclap’ repetitions of
primary themes) go beyond mere effect to delineate structure and
vitalize rhythmic flow, goals also identifiable in details such as the
frequent use of cross-accents – another technique appropriated by
Beethoven. Similarly, the famous ‘dwindling’ conclusion of the
Farewell Symphony, no.45 (1772) – anticipated eight years earlier in
the pp ending of no.23 – exemplifies among other things Haydn’s
concern with the coherence of the symphonic cycle (see Webster,
1991). This concern also appears in the cyclic recall of material from
earlier movements in the finales of nos.31 and 46. As an orchestrator
Haydn used many fresh sounds, including an opening drum-roll (no.
103), english horns in place of oboes (no.22), solo double bass (trios
of nos.6–8, finales of nos.72 of 1763, 31 and 45), janissary
instruments (no.100) and four concertante horns (nos.72, 31;
compare also nos.13 and 39, also with four horns, and the slow
movement of no.51, with horn solos at both extremes of range). The
many solos for strings and wind were considered exemplary by
critics even in the epicentre of the symphonie concertante, Paris
itself.
Haydn’s range of symphonic tonalities is the broadest of any 18th-

century composer: in contradiction to the myth of the ‘cheerful’
Haydn, he actually wrote a larger proportion of works in minor keys
than most 18th-century symphonists (exceptions are Vanhal, Beck
and Gossec), and no.45 is the only known symphony of the 18th
century in F♯ minor. Tonal relationships between movements are less
adventurous than in his piano sonatas and chamber music, although
the G major second movement of no.99 in E♭ must have been
surprising in its time. Within movements, however, modulations
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often explore daringly remote tonalities by new pathways, especially
various types of 3rd relationship; here Haydn clearly anticipated
Beethoven and Schubert.
Haydn’s attention to structure may account for his apparently lesser

emphasis on melody in its own right: despite many themes of great
appeal, he often impresses more with motivic evolutions than
through the originality or beauty of his initial material. Many of
Haydn’s themes begin the process of motivic accretion and
development even at their first appearance. Indeed, the folklike
quality commonly associated with his themes may in certain cases
result less from true folk influence than from this developmental
intent, which requires thematic material that is simple in both
melody and rhythm in order to leave room for later manoeuvres.
Haydn’s extended and forceful transition sections also include
considerable development, and his frequent ‘monothematic’
expositions, in which the secondary theme restates or is derived
from the primary theme, may also be regarded as examples of this
developmental principle.
(ii) Mozart.
Mozart began writing symphonies in England in 1764, more than a
quarter of a century before Haydn’s visits. With this very early start,
at the age of eight, Mozart’s composition of symphonies spans nearly
25 years; but his activity was sporadic, resulting from the needs of a
variety of circumstances rather than, as with Haydn, the steadier
requirements of a permanent appointment. This led to a somewhat
heterogeneous instrumentation and style that do not necessarily
reflect Mozart’s own preferences or stylistic development. The
friendly contact with J.C. Bach and Abel in London furnished Mozart
with an enduringly significant model: a warmly italianate style of
compelling lyricism and graceful rhythmic movement, to which his
Austro-German background added harmonic depth, textural interest,
subtlety of phrasing and orchestral virtuosity.
Mozart’s early symphonies are beset with numerous problems of

authenticity and chronology. The earliest works, written in London
and the Netherlands in 1764–6 during the Mozart family’s first
grand tour, are now considered to include K16, the recently
discovered 19a, 19, 22 and 45a (Zaslaw, Mozart’s Symphonies 1989).
All are in three movements with a 3/8 finale. Each first movement is
in binary-sonata form, in which only the second half of the
exposition, beginning with the secondary theme, is recapitulated; the
only anomalies are the omission of double bars and repeat signs in
K19 and 22 (as in most Italian overtures and many Mannheim
symphonies) and in K22 the return of the primary theme at the end
to round off the movement (again as in many Mannheim
symphonies). Though these symphonies are routinely described as
Italian in style, it requires only four bars of K16 to observe the
stylistic blending mentioned earlier. It opens with a bustling operatic
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triad theme in unison, but beginning in bar 4 there are held chords,
with suspensions, in all parts except the bass (which moves in an
offbeat crotchet figure); the effect is that of a Fuxian counterpoint
exercise. After a repetition of both phrases, the scurrying turns and
tremolos of the transition return us to the opera house. Either or
both of the two slightly later works K19a and 19, usually assigned to
London, may have been written after the Mozarts’ departure for the
Netherlands in September 1765 (Zaslaw, Mozart’s symphonies;
however, Gersthofer, 1993, considers K19 the earlier of the two and
assigns it to London). The opening of K19a recalls J.C. Bach’s
singing-allegro style, while that of K19 is a statement-and-response
cliché obviously patterned on the main theme of an Abel symphony
Mozart had copied. Though these movements contain a number of
sophisticated touches, they often sound four-square owing to their
abrupt rhythms and a general lack of linear direction. In the
Andantes, however, the leisurely italianate lines sometimes stretch
to unexpected lengths, and the slow movement of K22 (The Hague,
December 1765) introduces both more counterpoint and more
chromaticism than most such movements of the time, in the latter
case foreshadowing the characteristic touches of harmonic pathos in
Mozart’s later works.
With the little symphonies K43, 45 and 48 of 1767–8, written in

Vienna, Mozart made a seemingly sharp turn towards the four-
movement Viennese model. More important than the number of
movements, however, is the continuing blend of German and Italian
traits. Almost every transition brings the familiar Italian tremolos;
trill, snap and turn figures activate many themes; and there are
cantabile Andantes and 3/8, 6/8 and 12/8 finales. But one also finds
rather squarely phrased slow movements (K48), plodding
divertimento-style triplet lines (K45, minuet and trio) and themes
like remnants of counterpoint exercises (opening of K45). Arguably
the best of this group is K48, whose ‘affinity with such works as
Haydn’s Symphonies Nos.3 and 13 is quite obvious’ (Larsen, 1956, p.
162); in the opening movement this can be recognized in the
sweeping primary theme, the strong rhythmic drive, the sharp
dynamic contrasts and the omission of a clear secondary theme
(otherwise virtually de rigueur in Mozart’s first movements), not to
mention the surprise cadence in the closing section. The presence of
these Haydnesque elements, however, also draws attention to
Mozart’s development as a symphonist: though using highly
rhythmic material, he maintains his identity with the
characteristically orderly punctuation between phrases and theme
groups, the italianate lines and chromaticism in the slow movement
and the brashness of the minuet, which after four sober opening
bars explodes in violin semiquaver scales that rush up two octaves in
two bars. The first-movement forms show a continuing diversity:
among these supposedly Viennese-modelled works, the first
movement of K43 maintains the binary-sonata design of the early
symphonies, and K45 omits repeats, anticipating its re-use as the
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overture to La finta semplice. Although Mozart must have heard
many full sonata forms by Viennese composers such as Hofmann and
Dittersdorf, only K48 has a convincing reprise of primary material.
The 1769–71 period includes two trips to Italy, separated by a return

to Salzburg. The symphonies associated with the first journey
strongly reflect familiar Italian usages such as three-movement
cycles (K74, 81, 84), linking of the first and second movements (K74,
95), omission of repeat signs, and even exposition-recapitulation
forms (with the two halves connected by a transition over a
dominant pedal; first movements of K74, 84). By contrast, a
symphony written while back in Salzburg in July 1771, K110,
illustrates a growing fusion of styles: the German background entails
the presence of four movements, with full sonata form (including
repeats) in the first movement, a vigorous minuet with a near-canon
between violins and bass and a rousing finale (also with a hint of
violin-bass imitation at the beginning) that includes a well-developed
episode in the relative minor. In the slow movement, however, a
leisurely italianate melody betrays thoughts far from rainy Salzburg,
though here again the well-schooled Germanic texture includes a
clever dialogue between violins as well as other attractive inner lines
and brief imitations. Back again in Milan, K112 (November 1771)
falls less under the Italian spell than the symphonies of the first
journey. In the secondary section a charming dialogue between the
oboes (doubled at the octave by divided violas) and the violins
immediately evokes an opera buffa argument by its snap rhythms.
Similarly, the 3/8 finale begins like a typical curtain-raiser; but
subsequently the stress falls on a balanced unfolding of ideas, an
attitude already apparent in the development of the first movement
(in full sonata form, with repeats) and the well-crafted slow
movement. In sum, Mozart’s symphonies of 1771 begin to exploit the
contrast between German and Italian styles, inexhaustible sources of
colour and balance that were to become the main underlying
characteristics of his personal style. By this time he was moving
towards an effectively integrated style, and many phrases contain
evidence of originality, charm and strength. On the other hand,
segmentation often tends to interrupt the basic movement,
forestalling the development of a broader continuity.
The highly productive period in Salzburg from December 1771 to

August 1772 yielded at least eight symphonies. There are still
stylistic mixtures not yet fully assimilated: the first movements of
K133 and 134, for example, still use the type of sonata form in which
recapitulation of the primary theme is withheld until near the end (to
be followed in K134 by a coda – so labelled – featuring a crescendo
passage). As representatives of Mozart’s most evolved and expansive
style to date, however, works such as K132 and 134 deserve more
frequent revival: K132 shows how Italian high spirits can be applied
in a fully developed sonata form (here without repeats), and K134,
which contrasts a driving 3/4 Allegro – Haydnesque except for its
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formal structure – with a spacious early version of the Andante
cantabile mood and opening melodic gesture of ‘Porgi amor’ from Le
nozze di Figaro.
After a third trip to Italy for the production of Lucio Silla in

November 1772–March 1773, Mozart again set about composing
symphonies, producing four in the space of one and a half months.
The strongly italianate orientation of these works is evident both in
their overall style and in such formal traits as the omission of
minuets and trios, the presence of transitions to connect each
movement in K184/161a and 181/162b, and in the second of these
works the use of exposition-recapitulation form in the first
movement. Yet contrapuntal touches such as the double fugato that
opens the finale of K199/161b remind us that Mozart was now,
doubtless to his chagrin, back in Salzburg.
Autumn 1773 marks the beginning of Mozart’s maturity as a

symphonist. When he returned to Salzburg at the end of September
from a ten-week stay in Vienna, he began writing works in a more
fully realized style that resolved earlier conflicts and imbalances
while at the same time increasing the size and expressive range of
every movement. The design of first movements follows the full
sonata pattern, emphasized by stronger punctuation between
sections and sharper thematic contrast, both melodically and
orchestrally. Now there are no static lines, no dead spots, no loose
ends. From this period stems the first of his only two minor-mode
symphonies, K183 in G minor (dated 5 October 1773), a work of
precocious feeling with an opening in syncopated octaves that
recalls Haydn’s ‘Lamentatione’ (no.26 in D minor, written some five
years earlier). Balancing this darker part of the spectrum, the genial
symphony K201 in A (dated 6 April 1774) contains two of the most
hilarious passages anywhere in Mozart. The first occurs at the end of
each half of the minuet, where unison oboes and horns add two bars
of dotted musical parody. The second occurs in the finale, where a
rising whirlwind scale appears out of nowhere in the violins at the
end of the exposition, development and recapitulation; left up in the
air each time, it is only brought down to earth at the last possible
moment by the closing chords of a brief coda. Mozart had already
assimilated the strategy of Haydn’s long-range structural question
marks.
After these works of 1773–4 Mozart essentially had no call to

compose symphonies until the ‘Paris’, K297 (June 1778), written
after his extended stay at Mannheim in 1777–8. Both this and the
three he composed after his return to Salzburg in early 1779 (K318,
319 and 336) reflect his experiences in Mannheim and Paris, as seen
in their orchestration (including clarinets for the first time in K297),
use of three movements, and omission of double bars and repeat
signs in the opening movements. The choice in K318 of a type of da
capo overture form (see above, §5) has led to speculation that it was
originally written as the overture to one of Mozart’s vocal works of
the period.
Page 42 of 94
Mozart’s composition of symphonies was even more sporadic after
his move to Vienna in 1781, but the works he did produce are, of
course, among the masterpieces of the symphonic literature: K385,
the ‘Haffner’ (no.35 in the traditional numbering, 1782), originally
intended as the core movements of a serenade; K425, the ‘Linz’ (no.
36, 1783); K504, the ‘Prague’ (no.38, 1786; ‘no.37’ is a symphony by
Michael Haydn with a slow introduction by Mozart); and the great
trilogy of summer 1788, consisting of K543 in E♭, K550 in G minor
and K551 in C, the ‘Jupiter’ (nos.39–41). In addition to the
extraordinary expansiveness, originality, emotional depth,
sophistication and craft of these works, the last four in particular
may be seen as consummate examples of the different expressive
characters a work by Mozart may evince: vivacious buffo style in no.
38, italianate lyricism and warmth in no.39, an often disturbing
‘Sturm und Drang’ in no.40 and transcendent brilliance – including
contrapuntal brilliance – in no.41.
Mozart’s own natural gifts, especially his feeling for colour and
balance, set the pattern for a number of specific differences between
his symphonies and those of Haydn. His sensitivity to colour
produced more regular assignments for the wind instruments and,
often, a more idiomatic style of writing. It was this colour sense, too,
that called forth his rich chordal vocabulary and his ingenious and
far-ranging, but always smoothly executed, modulations. One might
even relate Mozart’s highly variegated rhythms to a sense of colour,
at least if ‘colour’ is equated with variety and contrast. In a sense his
remarkable rhythmic vocabulary is a by-product of contrast on a still
larger scale, namely the strong characterization of structural areas
by the creation of special thematic types: as with J.C. Bach, one can
usually recognize the precise expositional function of a Mozart
theme even when it is removed from its context.
This concern for colour also appears in Mozart’s handling of

development sections. The reliance on modulation, often without
significant thematic alteration, has caused some writers to consider
Mozartian developments less substantial and ‘serious’ than Haydn’s.
Yet the character of Mozart’s expositions to some extent demanded
his own special solutions later in the movement: elaborate motivic
development might blur the characteristic thematic personalities
that had been so carefully distinguished in the exposition, and in any
event a perfectly formed phrase of exquisite lyricism may not lend
itself easily to fragmentation. Thus Mozart’s development sections
typically maintain interest by refreshing one or more of his
established thematic types with a trip through unfamiliar orchestral
and harmonic territory, so that the tonic reprise can be recognized
as its proper home. In the same way, Mozart rarely rewrites his
recapitulations to the extent that Haydn does, though he frequently
appends a coda, as implied already.
The word ‘symmetry’, sometimes too casually applied to Mozart’s

music, usually expresses qualities of coordination and balance. In
any single phrase-unit in Mozart the activity of each musical element
Page 43 of 94
is typically coordinated to an unusual degree, a characteristic that in
turn makes possible meticulous balances in activity between
phrases. At the opening of no.41, for instance, the strong rhythmic
activity of the first two bars is offset by lesser melodic and harmonic
action; this leads to a balancing pair of bars in which melody and
harmony take the lead while rhythm is relatively quiescent. These
shifting priorities, also carefully adjusted between the larger
sections of a piece, provide one explanation for the convincing flow
of Mozart’s music, a motion very different from Haydn’s driving
motivic development and broad tensions.
Two final characteristics of Mozart’s mature symphonic style may be

worth noting. First, some aspects of his rhythmic control, though
less noticeable on the surface than Haydn’s motivic drive, often
contribute significantly to the fundamental movement. For example,
the progress of the harmonic rhythm, especially as reflected in the
rate of chord change, can effect a compelling climax. Thus in the
first bars of no.40 the chord rhythm accelerates in an almost
geometric progression: one four-bar chord, two two-bar chords,
seven one-bar chords, six half-bar chords, and four crotchet chords,
pausing finally on a two-bar dominant. A second point, also generally
overlooked, concerns Mozart’s development of an ending that
included both serenity and brilliance. Between the usual forte
cadential themes he sometimes introduced a piano penultimo: a
quiet, reflective theme that enhances the brilliance of the final
cadential bars (see for example the first movement of no.40). This
heightened contrast in the closing area lends a special conviction
and definitive repose to a Mozartian conclusion, noticeable in
embryo as early as the first movement of K134. In perfecting other
parts of the movement, he had attained a superb balance of phrases,
thematic areas and main divisions; now, for the end of a movement,
he discovered the means to a totally satisfying finality.
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Kongressbericht Mannheim 1991 (Frankfurt, 1994)
J.P. Larsen: ‘Zur Vorgeschichte der Symphonik der Wiener Klassik’,

ed. E. Badura-Skoda and N. Krabbe, SMw, 43 (1994), 67–143
G. Wagner: Die Sinfonien Carl Philipp Emanuel Bachs: werdende

Gattung und Originalgenie (Stuttgart, 1994)
D. Heartz: Haydn, Mozart and the Viennese School, 1740–1780 (New

York, 1995)
E.K. Wolf: ‘I Concerti grossi dell’Opera I (1721) di Pietro Antonio

Locatelli e le origini della sinfonia’, Intorno a Locatelli: Studi in
occasione del tricentenario della nascita di Pietro Antonio Locatelli
(1695–1764), ed. A. Dunning (Lucca, 1995), 1169–93
A.P. Brown: ‘The Trumpet Overture and Sinfonia in Vienna (1715–

1822): Rise, Decline and Reformulation’, Music in Eighteenth-
Century Austria, ed. D. Wyn Jones (Cambridge, 1996), 13–69
S. Gerlach: Joseph Haydns Sinfonien bis 1774: Studien zur

Chronologie (Cologne, 1996) [Haydn-Studien, 7/1–2]
For further bibliography see also articles on individual

composers and geographical centres
II. 19th century

Mark Evan Bonds
1. The essence of the genre.

For all its outward variety, the 19th-century symphony exhibits
remarkable coherence as a genre, from the early symphonies of
Beethoven up to the middle-period symphonies of Mahler. The
genre’s identity rests in part on external criteria of size and
structure: composers consistently designated as a symphony a work
for a medium- or large-sized orchestra, usually consisting of three,
four or five movements (most commonly four). These movements
generally follow the pattern of (1) an extended opening movement,
often in sonata form, sometimes preceded by a slow introduction; (2)
a lyrical slow movement, typically in sonata form, ABA, or theme and
variations; (3) a dance-inspired scherzo movement, in triple metre;
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and (4) a fast finale. The order of the two middle movements was
sometimes reversed, and there were of course other exceptions to
this pattern in practice, but they remain exceptions.
By these external criteria alone, however, one could legitimately

define a symphony as a ‘sonata for orchestra’, whereas in fact the
differences between the two genres are profound. Throughout the
late 18th and 19th centuries critical commentary on the symphony
repeatedly emphasized distinctive qualities: an essentially
polyphonic texture and a ‘public’ tone. The symphony was
consistently valued for its unique ability to unite the widest possible
range of instruments in such a way that no one voice predominates
and all contribute to the whole. Although chamber music could lay
similar claim to an essential equality of voices, its timbral resources
were necessarily limited and it was performed before a relatively
small, elite audience (if indeed before any audience at all). The
concerto, in turn, although decidedly public in nature, never enjoyed
the prestige of the symphony because of the genre’s aesthetically
suspect propensity towards virtuoso display.
Performed by a large number of players on a diverse range of

instruments and projected to a large gathering of listeners, the
symphony came to be seen as the most monumental of all
instrumental genres. The all-embracing tone of the symphony was
understood to represent the emotions or ideas not merely of the
individual composer but of an entire community, be it a city, a state,
or the whole of humanity. As reflected in the writings of such critics
as Paul Bekker, Arnold Schering and Theodor Adorno, this
perspective continued into the 20th century, yet by the end of the
century it was all but lost. It nevertheless constitutes one of the
essential elements in perceptions of the symphony throughout the
19th century. Indeed, the essence of this perspective is evident as
early as 1774 in Schulz’s entry on the Symphony for J.G. Sulzer’s
Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste, where Schulz likened the
symphony to a ‘choral work for instruments’, in which no single
voice predominates but in which, rather, ‘every voice is making its
own particular contribution to the whole’. It was specifically in this
latter connection that Schulz compared the symphony to a Pindaric
ode, a work written to be sung in communal celebrations by a large
chorus and expressing the ideas of an entire community, as opposed
to those of the poet alone. Schulz went on to take three prominent
composers of his generation to task for writing symphonies that
sounded too much like arias performed on instruments: he declared
certain (unspecified) movements by J.G. Graun, C.H. Graun and J.A.
Hasse to be ‘feeble’ in their effect in spite of – or rather, precisely
because of – their melodic beauty. Only occasionally, according to
Schulz, did these composers succeed in achieving the ‘true spirit of
the symphony’, which is to say, a predominantly polyphonic texture
in which all voices contribute more or less equally.
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This perception of the symphony as an expression of communal
sentiment grew throughout the 19th century. According to Koch
(1802), the symphony ‘has as its goal, like the chorus, the expression
of a sentiment of an entire multitude’. Fink, a generation later
(1834–5), amplified this by declaring a symphony to be ‘a story,
developed within a psychological context, of some particular
emotional state of a large body of people’. It is by no means
coincidental that so many programmatic interpretations of
seemingly ‘absolute’ symphonies conjure up images of large groups
rather than of individuals. Momigny’s analysis (1803–6) of Haydn’s
Symphony no.103 is typical: here, a large gathering prays for relief
against the terrors of thunder, rejoices at the arrival of sunny
weather and cowers collectively at the sudden and unexpected
return of the thunder towards the end of the movement. Momigny’s
analysis of a chamber work, by contrast, Mozart’s String Quartet in
D minor K421, focusses on Dido’s anguish at Aeneas’s departure
from Carthage: the grief expressed here is personal, not collective.
The many programmatic interpretations of Beethoven’s Seventh
Symphony, in turn, evoke images of some kind of communal
gathering, such as a peasant dance or wedding (first movement), a
priestly ceremony (second movement), a dance (scherzo) and a
bacchanal (finale). However naive such interpretations may strike us
today, they reveal a fundamental disposition towards hearing in a
symphony the sentiments of a multitude as opposed to those of a
mere individual.
Throughout the 19th century this relationship of individual voices to

the orchestra as a whole was frequently compared to the
relationship between the individual and the ideal society or state –
that is, to an essentially democratic, egalitarian society in which no
single figure predominates and in which individuals can fully realize
their potential only as functioning members of a much larger society.
Individual voices are ‘melted to become discrete single elements
within the whole’, as one anonymous writer put it in 1820, thereby
reflecting ‘the universality of humanity’. In this regard, Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony lies very much within the tradition of the genre, in
spite of its external novelty of adding voices. Schiller’s text extols
the ideals of utopian brotherhood and social equality, precisely those
characteristics that contemporaneous writers associated with the
genre of the symphony itself.
The distinction between sonata and symphony extended to the

audience as well, which in turn had important ramifications for
symphonic style. Until the second quarter of the 19th century the
sonata was essentially a domestic genre, to be performed either for
the pleasure of the performer alone or at most for a small circle of
friends. The symphony, by contrast, had to fill increasingly larger
spaces and appeal to a diverse audience, particularly from the late
18th century onwards. Accordingly, the symphony was perceived as
a genre that by its very nature had to use broader gestures and
simpler themes than were either feasible or desirable in a sonata.
Symphonic themes – particularly those found in the opening of a first
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movement – could not be too introspective or rely on refinement and
embellishment to make their effect. On hearing the bold unison
opening of Brahms’s D minor Piano Concerto at a concert for the
first time, Bruckner is reported to have said in a loud whisper: ‘But
this is a symphony theme!’. Whatever the veracity of the anecdote, it
illustrates the underlying assumption about the nature of symphonic
themes and the symphonic genre in general (Bruckner presumably
did not know at the time that Brahms’s concerto had in fact been
conceived as a symphony).
By the late 18th century, then, but particularly in the wake of

Beethoven, the symphony emerged as an institutional projection of
the beliefs and aspirations of composers, performers and audiences
alike. Mahler’s much-quoted remark in the early 20th century that a
symphony must be ‘like the world’ echoes a long tradition that
viewed the symphony as the most cosmic of all instrumental genres.
This tendency towards the cosmic is most immediately evident in the

ever-increasing size of the symphonic orchestra. At the beginning of
the 19th century standard scoring for a large (‘grosse’) symphony
called for strings, double woodwind (flutes, oboes, clarinets,
bassoons), two horns, two trumpets and timpani. New instruments
were steadily introduced over the course of the century. Trombones,
traditionally restricted to the realms of church and theatre, appear
in the finale of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the ‘Storm’ movement
of his Sixth and the finale of his Ninth. The piccolo, double bassoon
and certain percussion instruments, such as the bass drum, triangle
and cymbals, previously reserved for special effect (e.g. Haydn’s
Military Symphony and the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth) become
increasingly common during the second half of the 19th century,
with the symphonies of Mahler constituting a veritable compendium
of orchestral instruments. That Mahler should use such unlikely
instruments as cowbells and anvils speaks not only to his own
personal style but also to the broader tradition of the symphony as
an all-encompassing genre. The introduction of valved brass
instruments in the 1820s and 30s dramatically increased the useful
range and timbre of horns and trumpets. By the end of the century
the norm for a large orchestra had grown to triple woodwind (with
third players doubling on an additional instrument) and up to 20
brass instruments, in addition to an ever-increasing number of
strings. As concert halls grew in size, so did the ensembles
performing there.
Beyond these purely technical changes, and partly as a result of this

expansion of orchestral possibilities, timbre itself became a
distinctive feature for symphonists. Quite aside from issues of form,
harmony or thematic construction, the timbre of Berlioz’s
symphonies is distinct from that found in the symphonies of
Bruckner, which in turn is altogether different from that found in
symphonies by Brahms, Tchaikovsky or Mahler. Every major
symphonist of the 19th century felt a certain obligation to create a
distinctive orchestral sound within the genre. This timbre, in turn,
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represented something far more basic than an additional ‘layer’
imposed on a composition’s essential part-writing. Here again, the
contrast between sonata and symphony is particularly evident: 19th-
century critics consistently distinguish true symphonies from
‘orchestrated sonatas’ by the nature of the orchestral writing. A true
symphony was perceived as a work whose very essence emerged
from the polyphonic web of all instrumental parts and their
distinctive colours.
Because of the symphony’s aesthetic prestige, and because of the

sheer technical demands of writing one, this genre was almost
universally acknowledged as a touchstone of compositional prowess
as early as the first quarter of the 19th century. It was widely felt
that a composer could not (or at least should not) step forward with
a work in this genre until he had shown sufficient mastery of smaller,
less demanding forms of composition. The symphony was seen as a
means of achieving fame but not fortune, for in spite of its prestige
the genre as a whole remained economically unprofitable for
composers and publishers alike. Symphonies were difficult to
compose, demanding to perform and expensive to publish. Printed
scores, moreover, had little appeal beyond a relatively small market
of affluent connoisseurs. It was rare for a symphony before
Beethoven’s time to be published in score. Indeed the first
Beethoven symphony to be published in score on the Continent – the
Seventh – did not appear until 1816, and his Fifth and Sixth were not
published in score until 1826. Arrangements, particularly for piano,
were distributed more widely, but here again the market was fairly
limited. Kirby’s survey (1995) of symphonies published in German-
speaking lands during the 19th century, including piano
arrangements, shows that only 122 symphonies were issued between
1810 and 1860 – that is, only two or three works each year. These
numbers increased somewhat in the later decades of the century but
remained relatively small even in comparison with other large
genres like the oratorio or opera. In an odd way, the poor economic
incentives of symphonic composition helped add to the genre’s aura
as the highest form of instrumental music. Anyone composing a
symphony, after all, could scarcely be accused of pursuing
commercial gain.
Ironically, the number of performance venues for symphonies began

to increase exponentially in the third and fourth decades of the 19th
century, even as the production and dissemination of new works in
the genre declined. Symphonies, along with oratorios, constituted
the central repertory of the many music festivals that sprang up in
Germany during the first half of the 19th century. The emergence of
a canonic repertory centred on the late symphonies of Haydn and
Mozart and the nine of Beethoven helped further the growth of civic
orchestras and standing concert series in Germany and elsewhere
during the second quarter of the century. Yet this same canonic
repertory also made it more difficult for new works to find
acceptance.
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2. Beethoven.
Beethoven’s First Symphony appeared on the musical scene at a
time (1801) when instrumental music in general, and the symphony
in particular, was beginning to enjoy an unprecedented rise in
aesthetic status. By the last decade of the 18th century the
symphony had already established itself as the most prestigious of
all instrumental genres, yet because it lacked a clearly perceptible
object of representation, it was typically received (along with all
other forms of instrumental music) as a means of entertainment
rather than as a vehicle of social, moral or intellectual ideas. In his
Critique of Judgment (1790), Kant echoed the general sentiment of
his time in dismissing instrumental music as ‘more pleasure than
culture’ on the grounds that it could not incorporate concepts and
must therefore be judged according to the pleasure emanating from
its form alone. Any associative content of thought in the mind of the
listener, according to Kant, was merely ‘accidental’. Instrumental
works that did attempt to ‘represent’ a specific event or object, in
turn, were routinely scorned as naive and aesthetically inferior.
Within only a few decades, Kant’s views on this matter had been
thoroughly supplanted, at least in Germany, where instrumental
music was cultivated with special intensity. This is due in part to the
growing recognition of the symphonic achievements of Haydn,
Mozart and Beethoven in the early 19th century, and in part to a
broader change in attitudes towards instrumental music in general.
Around 1800 the perceived defect of instrumental music – its lack of
a text and a definite object – began to be seen as a virtue. A number
of influential critics argued that music without a text was actually
superior, on the grounds that it was freed from the mundane
strictures of semantics and syntax. With this change in aesthetic
perspective came the premise that in addition to purely musical
ideas, a work of instrumental music could now embody moral,
philosophical and social ideas as well.
Of all musical genres, the symphony was the greatest beneficiary of

this new aesthetic. In reviews dating from 1809 and 1810, E.T.A.
Hoffmann declared the symphony to be the ‘opera of instruments’
and likened it to the drama. Such assertions reflect not only the
symphony’s implicitly dramatic qualities, but also its aesthetic status
and its ability to incorporate broader ideas beyond the purely
musical. Beethoven was of course by no means single-handedly
responsible for the emergence of the symphony as a vehicle of ideas:
the origins of this transformation are already evident in the late 18th
century, even before he had begun to make a name for himself as a
symphonist. Beethoven nevertheless played a central role in
transforming the genre at a crucial moment in its history, and his
direct impact would continue to be felt by several subsequent
generations of symphonists. Particularly from the ‘Eroica’ onwards,
Beethoven was seen to have explored a variety of ways in which
instrumental music could evoke images and ideas transcending the
world of sound. The notation of a ‘poetic idea’ has been a central
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constant in the reception of Beethoven’s instrumental music from
the composer’s own day down to the present, and nowhere is this
understanding more evident than in the reception of the Fifth
Symphony. Long before Anton Schindler had related Beethoven’s
putative comment about the work’s opening – ‘Thus fate knocks at
the door’ – E.T.A. Hoffmann and others had perceived in this
symphony an idealized trajectory of struggle leading to victory.
Symphonies with programmatic titles or movement headings, such
as ‘Eroica’ or ‘Pastoral’, pointed the way all the more openly towards
such extra-musical interpretations.
The nature of these interpretations has of course varied widely. To

have equated a symphony like the ‘Eroica’ with a specific individual
beyond the most general level would have been seen, even in
Beethoven’s day, as an exercise in triviality. At the same time, to
have perceived this work as an exemplar of ‘pure’ music, with no
connection to the outer world whatsoever, would have been
unthinkable. The aesthetic of ‘absolute’ music, necessarily defined in
terms of what it was not, began to emerge only in the middle of the
19th century. Although elements of this outlook are certainly evident
towards the end of the 18th century in the writings of such figures
as Wackenroder, Tieck and Hoffmann, the idealist aesthetic of the
time perceived instrumental music as the sonorous reflection of a
higher, abstract ideal. Critics of the early 19th century could thus
posit a connection between music and ideas without feeling
compelled to deliver any detailed explication of what those ideas
might actually be.
From a more technical perspective, Beethoven’s symphonies explore

a wide range of compositional approaches to issues that would
similarly occupy at least several generations of later composers.
Indeed, Beethoven’s innovations in formal design are so consistently
extraordinary, at the level of both the individual movement and the
multi-movement cycle, that it is impossible to single out any one of
his symphonies as ‘typical’. His integration of vocal forces into the
finale of the Ninth Symphony is merely the most obvious of the many
ways in which he explored fundamentally new approaches to the
genre. The Third Symphony, with its evocation of ethical and political
ideals and of death (‘Marcia funebre’) substantially extended the
bounds of the earlier ‘characteristic’ symphony and explicitly opened
the genre into the realm of the social. The Fifth Symphony is an
essay in cyclical coherence through thematic transformation and
inter-movement recall. The Sixth (‘Pastoral’) considers the
intersections of man and nature and in so doing explores the
pictorial potential of instrumental music in ways that range from the
vague (with the first movement heading, ‘Awakening of Happy
Thoughts upon Arriving in the Countryside’) to the astonishingly
specific (the birdcalls, labelled by species, that close the slow
movement). The Seventh Symphony, perhaps the most popular of all
Beethoven’s symphonies in the 19th century, eschews programmatic
headings but explores orchestral sonorities and rhythms with
unparalleled intensity.
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Among Beethoven’s symphonies, the ‘Eroica’ nevertheless stands out
as a work of singular historical significance, both for its emotional
content and technical innovations. Beethoven extended the size and
emotional scope of the first movement to unprecedented lengths
(even without a slow introduction, its 691 bars dwarf any
comparable previous movement); introduced the ‘functional’ genre
of the march into the slow movement; produced a through-composed
scherzo of novel length and speed; and provided a proportionately
substantial finale that is at once both readily apprehensible and
profound, integrating variations on a simple theme with a later
countertheme and extended passages of highly sophisticated
counterpoint. The work as a whole, moreover, follows an overarching
emotional trajectory that has often been described as approximating
a process of growth or development. The similarity in the opening
themes of the two outer movements is scarcely coincidental and
contributes to a broader sense of a dramatic psychological trajectory
in which the finale does not merely suceed the previous movements
but effectively represents a culmination of all that has gone before.
Critics have necessarily resorted to metaphor in describing this
emotional trajectory, and although these metaphors have varied
widely in their level of detail they have almost invariably been
associated with the idea of struggle followed by death and
culminating in rebirth or rejuvenation. That Beethoven’s music could
evoke such imagery so consistently and enduringly reflects the
continuing power of his music and of the new aesthetic of
instrumental music that emerged around 1800.
The Fifth Symphony also stands out as a work of unusual historical

importance, particularly as regards the question of cyclical
coherence. With its overt manipulation of a single motive across
multiple movements, its blurring of boundaries between the two final
movements, and the extended return to an earlier movement (the
third) within the course of its finale, the Fifth brings to the surface
strategies of cyclical coherence that had long been present but
rarely made so obvious. The Fifth is also significant for the emotional
weight of its finale, which reintroduces and resolves issues and ideas
left open in earlier movements. Beethoven thereby placed
unprecedented weight on a symphonic finale in a manner that was
immediately palpable. The finales of other symphonies, like the
Seventh and Eighth, affirm a more traditional function; as a whole,
these works also re-establish the use of more subtle connections
among their respective four movements, placing greater reliance on
the principle of complementarity, by which contrasting units create a
coherent whole.
The historical impact of the Ninth Symphony is considered in §4,

below.
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3. Beethoven’s contemporaries.
The generation of symphonists working during Beethoven’s lifetime
remains in many respects the most obscure of any in the entire
history of the genre, for these composers laboured not only in the
shadow of Beethoven but of Haydn and Mozart as well. Indeed, the
symphonies of the two earlier composers provided the most
important models for Beethoven’s contemporaries; not until the
1820s did Beethoven begin to assume his singular importance as the
genre’s paradigmatic composer, and even then only gradually. As
late as 1840, Robert Schumann was bemoaning the plethora of living
composers who could imitate ‘the powdered wigs of Haydn and
Mozart but not the original heads beneath those wigs’ and write
symphonies ‘as if Beethoven had never existed’.
Even symphonies by well-known composers of the early 19th

century, such as Méhul, Rossini, Cherubini, Hérold, Czerny,
Clementi, Weber and Moscheles were perceived in their own time as
standing in the symphonic shadow of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, or
some combination of the three. These works remain little-known
today. Czerny and Ferdinand Ries, in particular, were seen as
imitating Beethoven all too directly. Peter von Winter’s Schlacht-
Sinfonie of 1814 uses a concluding chorus a full decade before
Beethoven’s Ninth; in its essentially one-movement form, however,
this occasional work stands outside the generic tradition of the
symphony. New symphonies by other composers, including Paul
Wranitzky, Adalbert Gyrowetz, Friedrich Witt, Franz Danzi, Friedrich
Fesca, Franz Krommer, Johann Wilms, Andreas and Bernhard
Romberg, Joseph Küffner, Norbert Burgmüller and Johann Wenzel
Kalliwoda were greeted with respect and sometimes pleasure, but
rarely with enthusiasm.
Spohr, the best-known symphonist among Beethoven’s

contemporaries, followed the model of Mozart in his early
symphonies but began to experiment boldly with the genre after
Beethoven’s death. His ‘Die Weihe der Töne’ (1832) is an
instrumental work based on a poem of the same name, which Spohr
asked to be distributed or read aloud before every performance (the
full title of the work reads ‘The Consecration of Sound:
Characteristic Tone-Painting in the Form of a Symphony, After a
Poem by Carl Pfeiffer’). Spohr’s Sixth, the ‘Historical
Symphony’ (1839), was written ‘In the Style and Taste of Four
Different Periods’, representing the generations of Bach and Handel
(first movement), Haydn and Mozart (second movement), Beethoven
(scherzo) and the present day (finale); it is revealing that a number
of critics, including Schumann, could not tell whether this finale was
merely a weak movement or an ironic parody of what was then the
latest style. The three movements of Spohr’s Seventh Symphony,
written for double orchestra and subtitled ‘The Earthly and the
Divine in Human Life’ (1841), follow a trajectory from the ‘World of
Childhood’ through the ‘Age of Passions’ to the ‘Final Triumph of the
Heavenly’.
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Schubert, too, wrote his early symphonies following the generic
norms of Haydn and Mozart but soon came to recognize an inner
need for a new approach. He admired Beethoven’s symphonies and
confessed to a friend in 1824 that he was himself working his way
towards a large-scale (‘grosse’) symphony by composing string
quartets. At the time, in fact, he had already completed the two
remarkable movements of his Unfinished Symphony in B minor D759
and sketched portions of the third, but had apparently abandoned
the work out of doubts about an appropriate finale. In the last year
of his brief life, Schubert completed his celebrated Symphony in C
major D944, the ‘Great’, a masterpiece that points towards a
remarkably distinctive approach to the genre, one based not so
much on principles of thematic manipulation and artful counterpoint,
but on melody, colour and large-scale harmonic design. From a
historical standpoint, however, both the Unfinished and the ‘Great’
remained essentially unknown until their rediscovery and first public
performances in 1839 and 1865, respectively.
4. The crisis of the 1830s.

When surveying the history of the symphony for the first edition of
Grove’s Dictionary in 1889, even as sober a critic as C. Hubert H.
Parry (who had already written several symphonies of his own) felt it
necessary to justify extending his narrative beyond 1827, on the
grounds that ‘it might seem almost superfluous to trace the history
of Symphony further after Beethoven’. Given the prominence of such
subsequent composers as Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Raff,
Liszt, Rubinstein and Brahms within the concert repertory of the day,
Parry’s apologetic tone seems remarkable, yet it is altogether
representative of mainstream musical thought over the last three-
quarters of the 19th century. The challenge of composing a
symphony was particularly acute in the years immediately before
and after Beethoven’s death. The dilemma, simply put, was that
Beethoven could be neither copied nor ignored.
The key issue was never really one of style – few composers
attempted to imitate Beethoven directly in this regard – but rather of
generic conception. Beethoven’s Third to Seventh Symphonies had
substantially expanded the boundaries of what a symphony could be,
and his Ninth had effectively redefined the genre. In the wake of
such works, a symphony was no longer considered merely a matter
of entertainment, but a vehicle of moral, philosophical and even
political ideas. And by introducing text and voice into what had been
a traditionally instrumental genre, Beethoven had implicitly brought
into question the aesthetic superiority of instrumental music over
vocal music at a crucial juncture, just when the former was
established as a category of equal if not superior rank. Subsequent
generations were sharply divided on the implications of the Ninth’s
finale: Wagner saw it as manifesting the limits of purely instrumental
music and thus marking the end of the symphony as a vital genre;
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other composers were reluctant to imitate the model directly yet
uncertain how to extend the genre through purely instrumental
means.
In this respect, the Ninth Symphony was the catalyst for what can
only be called a crisis about the very nature of the genre. By 1830 an
intense debate on the future of music was in full progress and it was
the symphony, the most ambitious of all instrumental forms, that
stood at its centre. Critical commentary from the ensuing decade
betrays a pronounced crisis of faith about the continuing viability of
the genre. Schumann, in his celebrated review of Berlioz’s
Symphonie fantastique, pointed out in 1835 that after Beethoven’s
Ninth there had been legitimate reason to believe that the
‘dimensions and goals of the symphony’ had been exhausted. After
summarizing the most significant recent works of this kind,
Schumann declared Mendelssohn to have won ‘crown and sceptre
over all other instrumental composers of the day’, but noted that
even he had ‘apparently realized that there was nothing more to be
gained’ in the symphony and was now working principally within the
realm of the concert overture, ‘in which the idea of the symphony is
confined to a smaller orbit’.
Although Schumann may not then have realized it, Mendelssohn had
in fact abandoned, rejected or withheld no fewer than three
essentially complete symphonies during the first half of the decade.
He had repudiated both his First Symphony op.11 (1824) and his
Reformation Symphony (1832); allowed only a few performances of
the Italian Symphony in the mid-1830s; and delayed completion of
the Scottish Symphony for almost a decade in the 1830s and early
40s. Mendelssohn, moreover, was but one of several composers who
had taken up the genre of the symphony in the early 1830s only to
abandon it. Schumann himself, after repeated unsuccessful
attempts, would complete his own First Symphony only in 1841.
Liszt, too, had similarly given up work on a Revolutionary Symphony
around 1830 and did not return to the genre for another two
decades. Wagner, who had used Beethoven as a model (particularly
the Second and Seventh Symphonies), for his youthful Symphony in
C (1832), abandoned his next essay in the genre two years later and
subsequently declared that the symphony had exhausted itself with
Beethoven’s Ninth.
Many composers, to be sure, continued to write symphonies during

the 1820s and 30s, but there was a growing sense even at the time
that these works were aesthetically far inferior to Beethoven’s. A
competition in 1835 for the best new symphony, sponsored by the
Viennese publisher Tobias Haslinger, elicited no fewer than 57
entries from across the Continent, but even the winning entry (by
Franz Lachner) was greeted with mixed reviews from critics and the
public alike. Beethoven’s legacy was of course only one of many
factors affecting symphonic output of the 1820s and 30s, and it
would be simplistic to attribute any change (or lack of change)
within the genre to his influence alone. Clearly, the symphony did
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not and could not have ceased with the work of any individual
composer. The real question was not so much whether symphonies
could still be written, but whether the genre could continue to
flourish and grow as it had over the previous half-century in the
hands of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. On this count, there were
varying degrees of scepticism but virtually no real optimism.
The only composer in the 1830s able to grapple successfully with

Beethoven’s legacy was not a German, but a Frenchman. Berlioz was
widely acknowledged during his own lifetime, particularly in
Germany, as the true heir to Beethoven’s symphonic legacy. In each
of his three concert symphonies, Berlioz addressed generic
challenges laid down by Beethoven. His Symphonie fantastique of
1830, which gained considerable renown through Liszt’s piano
arrangement (1834) and Schumann’s lengthy and much-discussed
review of that arrangement (1835), represents almost a mirror
image of the Ninth Symphony. The finale’s ‘Dies irae’, an implicitly
vocal melody, serves as a dark counterpart to Beethoven’s ‘Ode to
Joy’ theme, and in Berlioz’s ‘Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath’, the
forces of evil triumph over the forces of good. The same pattern
holds true in Berlioz’s next symphony, Harold en Italie (1834). Again,
the hero is in fact an anti-hero and the soloist, who represents the
protagonist of Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, fails to triumph in
the end not because he is vanquished, but because he runs away.
Berlioz’s ‘Symphony with Chorus’, Roméo et Juliette (1839), reserves
the crucial scenes of Shakespeare’s drama not for the voices, but for
the orchestra. The brilliance and originality of Berlioz’s
orchestration, his fresh approach to the ‘cosmic’ nature of the genre
and his ability to blend music and narrative, both with and without
recourse to words, all inspired subsequent composers to seek new
approaches to addressing the metaphysical in the realm of the
symphony and to extend the spirit of Beethoven’s originality without
directly imitating him. The symphonies of Liszt and Mahler, in
particular, are deeply indebted to the legacy of Berlioz.
5. Germany and Austria, 1840–1900.

The recovery of Schubert’s C major Symphony in 1839 and the quick
successes of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Niels Gade in the genre in
the early 1840s brought at least a temporary halt to speculations
about the demise of the symphony. Without changing the essential
character of the genre as cultivated by Beethoven, all three
composers were able to create a more lyrical, less monumental type
of symphony, and all three at various times also incorporated the
idea of nationalistic colour into the genre: Mendelssohn in his Italian
and Scottish Symphonies, Schumann in his Third (‘Rhenish’) and
Gade in his First, whose outer movements use a folklike song of his
own composition.
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The reduced intensity of the debate surrounding the future of the
symphony was also due in part to the growing prominence of a
different vehicle for large orchestra, the concert overture. By the
1840s more and more composers were turning to this genre as an
outlet for orchestral composition. Inspired by the overtures of
Beethoven, particularly Coriolan and Leonore, no.3, composers
cultivated this more compact form as a vehicle within which to blend
musical, narrative and pictorial ideas. Mendelssohn’s overtures A
Midsummer Night’s Dream (1826) and The Hebrides (1830)
provided a model for many subsequent would-be symphonists to
write for a large orchestra without actually having to write a
symphony. Most of Liszt’s 12 symphonic poems, which grew directly
out of this tradition, appeared in rapid succession over a nine-year
period beginning in 1848.
These works soon became the focus of a polemical debate between

musical ‘progressives’ and ‘conservatives’ about the relationship of
musical sounds to ‘extra-musical’ ideas. To some extent, these
polemics centred on questions of degree rather than of kind for the
symphony, more than any other form of instrumental music, was
already perceived as an all-embracing, cosmic genre that
transcended the realm of sound alone. It is thus by no means
paradoxical that in the midst of writing (and writing about) his
symphonic poems, Liszt should also have produced two significant
symphonies that integrate traditional formal elements of the genre
with the programmatic character of the symphonic poem. The Faust-
Symphonie of 1854 (revised 1857) consists of three ‘character
pieces’ reflecting the three central characters of Faust, Gretchen
and Mephistopheles. In this work, Liszt used what would later come
to be known (in connection with Wagner’s music dramas) as
‘Leitmotifs’. The motifs associated with Faust in the first movement,
for example, become palpably softer and gentler in Gretchen’s
movement, mirroring Faust’s own emotional transformation through
love; Mephistopheles, in turn, has no significant theme of his own
but instead consistently warps themes heard in earlier movements.
The symphony concludes with a brief section for tenor and chorus
based on the closing scene of Goethe’s Faust, Part II. Liszt’s
Symphonie zu Dantes Divina commedia of 1856, also in three
movements, similarly concludes with a brief vocal section that
culminates a trajectory leading from struggle (Inferno, Purgatorio)
to paradise. The text is taken from the Magnificat. Liszt’s followers,
notably Joachim Raff and Felix Draeseke, continued to cultivate the
symphony along similarly programmatic lines. Raff’s popular
‘Leonore’ Symphony of 1872, the fifth of his 11 works in the genre,
is based on the well-known 18th-century ballad by Gottfried August
Bürger that traces the fate of two ill-starred lovers who in the end
are united in death.
With the growing importance of overtly programmatic music around

the middle of the century, a pronounced dichotomy of thought began
to emerge about the nature of instrumental music’s ‘content’.
Wagner helped polarize the division between ‘formalists’ and
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‘contentualists’ by introducing into the debate the implicitly
pejorative term ‘absolute music’ (as in ‘absolutely detached’). But
the opponents of Liszt and Wagner soon appropriated this term as a
positive (as in ‘absolutely transcendent’). Throughout his writings,
Wagner pointed out that his own theory of the music drama was
deeply indebted to the dramatic qualities inherent in Beethoven’s
symphonies. But by emphasizing the historical roots of the symphony
in dance, Wagner sought to deny the moral, social and philosophical
content accorded the genre not only by tradition but also by a great
many of his contemporaries. Wagner nevertheless remained deeply
ambivalent towards the genre of the symphony to the end of his life.
His repeated pronouncements about its death are contradicted by
his continuing ambitions to write one.
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony played a central and highly

problematic role within the ideological debate on the nature and
future of music. As the composer’s final work in the genre, the Ninth
had taken on a special aura as Beethoven’s last word on the
symphony, and by the second half of the 19th century conservatives
and progressives alike claimed it as part of their heritage, even if the
latter camp considered the genre itself to now be outmoded and
largely academic. It was within this highly charged polemical
atmosphere that Brahms introduced his First Symphony in 1876.
This work used the traditional sequence of four movements,
eschewed all overt programmatic indications in the score, and
employed a remarkably old-fashioned orchestra (the horn parts, for
example, could easily be played on the natural horns of Beethoven’s
time). In addition to his more obvious struggles with the legacy of
Beethoven, Brahms was also compelled to address – in music – more
recent debates about the viability of the symphony. As in
Beethoven’s case there is no ‘formula’ to Brahms’s symphonies: each
takes a different conceptual approach to the genre. In general,
Brahms sought to avoid making the symphony even more
monumental than it had already become. The relatively diminutive
inner movements of the First serve almost as interludes to the outer
movements, while the finale of the Second departs from the idea of a
grandiose, ‘culminative’ finale. The imposing passacaglia-based
finale of his Fourth Symphony, on the other hand, stands well within
a tradition set down in the ‘Eroica’.
Other German composers whose first symphonies appeared in the

third quarter of 19th century include Carl Goldmark (two, 1860 and
1887); Robert Volkmann (two, 1863 and 1865); Joseph Rheinberger
(three youthful symphonies, followed by the ‘Wallen’ and ‘Florentine’
symphonies of 1866 and 1887 respectively); Max Bruch (three,
written between 1870 and 1877); Carl Reinecke (three, between
c1870 and c1895); and Friedrich Gernsheim (four, between 1875 and
1896). Still, many later composers of note avoided the genre
altogether or abandoned it early on after a few youthful works.
Richard Strauss, for example, wrote two early symphonies (1880 and
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1884) but never returned to the genre. His Symphonia domestica
(1903) and Alpensinfonie (1915), in spite of their names, stand firmly
within the tradition of the symphonic poem.
Anton Bruckner’s 11 symphonies, composed between 1863 and 1896

(the Ninth remained unfinished at his death), occupy a curious
position in the polemics of the mid- and late 19th century. Although
Bruckner himself took no part in the debate between progressives
and conservatives, his symphonies were often allied with the
Wagnerian camp on the grounds of their extended harmonic
language, massive orchestral forces, imposing length, and the
composer’s open veneration of Wagner (the dedicatee of Bruckner’s
Third Symphony). Bruckner’s symphonies are nevertheless
remarkably independent in their generic conception. Building on the
traditional four-movement design, they are monumental in scope and
orchestration, combining lyricism with an inherently polyphonic
design. In contrast with the more typical techniques of thematic
manipulation and metamorphosis, Bruckner favoured an approach to
large-scale form that relied more on large-scale thematic and
harmonic juxtaposition. Over the course of his output, one senses an
ever-increasing interest in cyclic integration that culminates in his
masterpiece, the Symphony no.8 in C minor, a work whose final page
integrates the main themes of all four movements simultaneously.
The early symphonies of Gustav Mahler, in turn, take these ideas of

monumentality and cyclic integration to new extremes. Using
orchestral forces of unprecedented dimension, Mahler juxtaposed
the lyrical with the polyphonic, the monumental with the miniature,
the sentimental with the grotesque. All four of his symphonies
written in the 19th century strive towards a kind of utopian finale,
and in this sense, his debt to Beethoven’s Ninth is obvious. But in his
Third Symphony, the instrumental finale follows two vocal
movements, and in his Fourth the vocal finale is sung by a solo
soprano, without chorus. In this sense, Mahler stands at the end of
one tradition – the monumental, heroic symphony – and at the
beginning of another, one with a more circumspect, ambivalent tone.
Both traditions were to continue into the 20th century.
6. Other countries, 1840–1900.

For all practical purposes, the 19th-century symphony was for many
decades an essentially German genre, not only by virtue of the
nationality of its outstanding practitioners, but indeed by its very
nature. For much of the century, non-German composers typically
looked to Beethoven and other later Germans for their models. In
the latter part of the century, however, the broader phenomenon of
musical nationalism – the idea that music could draw on indigenous
melodic, harmonic, rhythmic folk idioms – provided an important
impetus to the symphony.
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Such tendencies are most clearly evident in the nationalities of
eastern Europe. Antonín Dvořák, who was trained and worked within
an essentially German environment, began to draw on dance
rhythms and melodic inflections of popular music from his native
Bohemia in his later symphonies, in particular. In his last work in the
genre, subtitled ‘From the New World’ (1893), he incorporated
musical impressions from his various tours to the USA. In Russia,
Anton Rubinstein also worked within an essentially German tradition
but in so doing provided an important model for subsequent
symphonists from his native land, including, most prominently,
Tchaikovsky. Rubinstein’s six symphonies, spanning the years 1850–
86, enjoyed considerable popularity in their time across the entire
continent, particularly his ‘Ocean’ Symphony (1851, revised 1863
and 1880). The 1860s witnessed the première of first symphonies by
an impressive array of Russian composers, including Rimsky-
Korsakov (1865), Tchaikovsky (1866), Balakirev (1866) and Borodin
(1867). Later Russian symphonists of note include Sergey Lyapunov
(two symphonies, 1887 and 1917), Alexandr Glazunov (the first of
whose eight symphonies was premiered in 1882), Serge
Rachmaninoff (three symphonies, the first from 1895), and Reyngol′d
Glier (three symphonies, the first from 1900). Unlike Rubinstein,
these later composers were more prone to incorporate into their
symphonies such nationalistic elements as modal inflections and
folk-inspired rhythms. Their orchestration also tends to reflect the
rich tradition of the Russian brass ensemble.
Although the symphony continued to play an important role in the

curriculum of the Paris Conservatoire, most of the more notable
French composers who cultivated the symphony after Berlioz were
inclined to write only a few works in this genre. A number of these
nevertheless represent important contributions to the symphony.
These include Saint-Saëns, who completed his First Symphony in
1853 and whose last symphony, the Third (1886), incorporates a
substantial part for organ; Gounod (two symphonies, from 1855 and
1856); and Bizet, whose vivacious Symphony in C major (1855) was
written when the composer was only 17 but remained essentially
unknown until its recovery in the 1930s. Bizet’s other symphony
(‘Roma’, also in C, 1868, revised 1871) reflects the composer’s
memories of his time in Italy. D’Indy’s unpublished Symphonie
italienne dates from 1872, while his popular Symphonie sur un chant
montagnard français, incorporating a prominent part for piano, was
given in 1886; he finished two later symphonies in 1903 and 1918.
Other notable French composers include Edouard Lalo (a single
work from 1886; his Symphonie espagnole represents an ingenious
hybrid of symphony and violin concerto); Ernest Chausson (a
Symphony in B♭ from 1890, with sketches for a Second Symphony
from 1899); and Paul Dukas (a single symphony, in C, from 1896).
The Belgian César Franck, whose youthful Première grande
symphonie of 1840 was followed almost 50 years later by the hugely
successful Symphony in D minor (1888), also belongs within this
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tradition. Franck’s D minor Symphony blends advanced chromatic
harmonies with rich orchestration and an almost obsessive devotion
to thematic cyclicity.
With rare exceptions, Italy remained largely indifferent to the

symphony in the 19th century. Neither its musical culture nor its
institutions were favourable to the development of instrumental
music for large ensembles. Indeed, the first performance of
Beethoven’s Ninth in Italy did not take place until 1878.
Throughout the 19th century England, for the most part, remained
under the direct influence of Germany. Cipriani Potter (ten
symphonies, written between 1819 and 1832) and William Sterndale
Bennett (six, between 1832 and 1864) produced well-crafted works
that extended the traditions of Haydn, Mozart and early
Mendelssohn. Later composers such as Frederic Cowen (six
symphonies, between 1869 and 1898), the Irish-born Charles Villiers
Stanford (seven, between 1875 and 1911), and Hubert Parry (four
symphonies, all in the 1880s) took the later works of Mendelssohn
and Schumann as their principal models. In his Third and Fourth
Symphonies (Scandinavian, 1880, and Welsh, 1884), Cowen
attempted to incorporate nationalistic – albeit personally foreign –
elements into the genre. Later, more personal, applications of this
strategy are evident in Stanford’s Irish Symphony of 1887 and
Parry’s English Symphony of 1889.
In Scandinavia, the most prominent exponent of the symphony was

the Dane Niels Gade, whose eight works in the genre span almost
three decades, between 1842 and 1870. After the youthful First,
however, none of Gade’s subsequent symphonies achieved anywhere
near the same degree of acclaim, and he gradually retreated from
his espousal of weaving nationalistic elements into music. Franz
Berwald, in turn, laboured in comparative obscurity while producing
four symphonies in the years 1842–5; only one of these, the First,
was performed during his lifetime, and his others remained unknown
for all practical purposes until the early 20th century. Grieg’s sole
contribution to the genre was a student work written under the eye
of Gade in 1864; he later suppressed (but did not destroy) this
symphony. Although Johan Svendsen’s two symphonies (1866 and
1877) attest to the influence of Norwegian harmonies and rhythms, a
distinctively Scandinavian symphonic tone emerged only at the very
end of the 19th century and the early 20th in the works of such later
composers as Nielsen and Sibelius.
In the USA, émigré composers provided an important impetus in

both the composition and performance of such symphonies. The
understanding of the symphony as a genre reflecting the aspirations
and ideals of a larger community is amply evident in the work of A.P.
Heinrich, who emigrated to the USA from his native Bohemia in the
first decade of the 19th century. In his Columbiad: Grand American
National Chivalrous Symphony (1837), he incorporated such tunes
as ‘Yankee Doodle’ and ‘Hail, Columbia’. Like Dvořák many decades
later, Heinrich was also much taken with Amerindians and their
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music, as is reflected in his Manitou Mysteries, or The Voice of the
Great Spirit, subtitled ‘Gran sinfonia misteriosa-indiana’ (1845),
which in spite of its distinctive title follows the traditional four-
movement format, with a rondo finale. L.M. Gottschalk’s First
Symphony, La nuit des tropiques (1859), on the other hand, is a two-
movement work that integrates rumba and fugue towards the end of
its finale. And in spite of its title, Gottschalk’s later À Montevideo:
Symphonie romantique pour grand orchestre (1868) incorporates
‘Hail, Columbia’ and ‘Yankee Doodle’. G.F. Bristow’s five symphonies
span some six decades between 1848 and 1893; his last, subtitled
‘Niagara’, uses vocal soloists and chorus in its finale, along the lines
of Beethoven’s Ninth, but incorporating such extant tunes as ‘Old
Hundredth’ and a portion of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s
Messiah. Charles Ives, whose most important symphonies fall within
the 20th century, built on all these traditions and more.
In the second half of the 19th century, ironically, native-born

American composers were more likely to travel to Germany for their
advanced musical training and follow in the more or less
conservative tradition of the Leipzig school as exemplified by
Mendelssohn and Schumann. These composers include John Knowles
Paine (two symphonies, 1875 and 1879); George Whitefield
Chadwick (three symphonies, between 1881 and 1894); and Horatio
Parker, whose sole symphony (1885) was a student work that
received its première in Munich. The Gaelic Symphony by Amy
Beach (1896), who received her training entirely in the USA, uses
Irish melodies.
7. Mixtures with other genres.

Mixtures with other genres are evident throughout the century;
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony opened the door to such generic cross-
breeding. Outstanding examples include hybrids with the concerto
(Berlioz’s Harold en Italie, Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole); cantata
(Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang, Félicien David’s Le Desert and
Christoph Colombe, the latter two designated as an ode-symphonie);
opera (Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette); and even the symphonic poem
(Liszt’s Faust-Symphonie). The ‘symphonic’ character of many pieces
that nominally lie outside the genre is evident in works such as
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko (‘Symphonic Pictures’) (1897) and
Debussy’s La mer (1903-5), subtitled ‘Three Symphonic Sketches’, in
which the remnants of symphonic form are still clearly discernible (a
slow introduction to a fast opening movement, followed by a scherzo
and a fast, culminative finale). Symphonic form and breadth are also
frequently evident in concertos, even when not indicated in titles.
The concertos of Schumann, Brahms and Dvořák, for example, all
show a tendency towards a fuller integration of soloist and orchestra
and turn away from an aesthetic of virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake,
preferring instead a depth of tone more typically associated with the
symphony. The symphony exerted demonstrable influence on the
orchestral suite as well. This genre enjoyed a brief but vigorous
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revival in the second half of the century at the hands of Volkmann,
Brahms, Dvořák and Tchaikovsky. Also of note is the phenomenon of
the organ symphony, as cultivated by Charles-Marie Widor.
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III. 20th century
Just as the first decade of the 19th century had seen the
crystallization, in Beethoven’s middle period, of a new type of
symphony, so the first decade of the 20th brought that type to its
fullest maturity and also effectively to its end. Not until then did the
purely formal attempt to cast a Romantic symphony in a Classical
mould give way once more to symphonic forms arising directly from
the nature of their materials. Though the recovery was, for historical
reasons, short-lived, it was to have important consequences.
1. 1901–18: Mahler, Sibelius, Nielsen.

Stephen Walsh
The most important symphonists before World War I are Mahler,

Sibelius, Elgar and (though his greatest symphonies came later)
Nielsen: to these may be added Skryabin, and Schoenberg if the
decided chamber character of his Kammersymphonie no.1, op.9
(1906) is allowed to be outweighed by its masterly deployment of
heterogeneous instrumental and musical means within a single,
extended and closely argued movement. Its four-movement-in-one
design is already prophetic of a vital tendency towards complete
fusion of contrasting elements in the modern symphony, whereas the
one-movement form of Skryabin’s later symphonies (La poème de
l’extase, 1905–8; Prométhée, le poème du feu, 1908–10) springs
rather from something static in the music’s harmony,
notwithstanding its heady rhythmic and contrapuntal activity. These
works are symphonic poems, as are Strauss’s enormous Symphonia
domestica (1902–3) and the picturesque Alpensymphonie (1915),
neither of them distinguished by either compression or rigour of
thought. One of the most beautiful works in this genre is the third of
Szymanowski’s four symphonies, a vocal-orchestral work subtitled
‘Song of the Night’ (1916). Its ecstatic tone reveals the influence of
both Skryabin and Debussy.
By the turn of the century Mahler had completed his first four
symphonies. They form a group related to the early song cycle,
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, and to the Des Knaben
Wunderhorn songs, examples of which appear as independent
movements. Remarkable though these symphonies are at the
imaginative level, they hardly achieve a true symphonic fusion of
their diverse ingredients. When Mahler told Sibelius in 1907 that
‘the symphony must be like the world; it must be all-embracing’, he
was merely echoing the instinctive Romantic feeling that all
products of the one imagination enjoyed ipso facto a sufficient unity,
the test being only one of quality. However, his own last five
completed symphonies (nos.5–9, of which all but the last were
completed before the meeting with Sibelius) retreat significantly
from this position. The Fifth (1902), Sixth (1904) and Seventh (1905)
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form a second group, distinguished from the first not only because
they are purely orchestral but because of a new discipline in the
thematic and formal craftsmanship. No doubt the two points are
related. But Mahler’s orchestral music after 1900 still alludes to
contemporary vocal works (for instance, the various references to
the Kindertotenlieder and Rückert songs in the Fifth Symphony) and
moreover he still evidently saw the symphony in narrative theatrical
terms. All three begin with marches of a funereal or tragic character,
and the hero either overcomes his troubles (in the exuberant rondo
finales of nos.5 and 7, both of which end in keys other than that in
which the work began) or confronts them in a stern spirit of
acceptance (no.6). On the other hand, these symphonies are
designedly more Classical in method than their predecessors. The
four-movement plan of the Sixth appears to be a conscious attempt
to reassert the autonomous musical form of the Classical symphony.
Its stringent motivic procedures are in the greatest possible contrast
with the loose assemblage of picturesque themes in the vast first
movement of no.3. Similarly in the Fifth, though the form appears
more random, its operation is precise, direct and economical. The
adumbration of the rondo’s jubilant climax at the end of the
otherwise anguished first part is a master stroke that enables the
finale to clinch the whole design in a way both musically and
psychologically apt.
But Mahler’s attempts to restore the conventional quadripartite form

of the Classical symphony had to contend with a critical problem of
late Romantic music: namely that if musical ideas were to be the
direct arbiter of form, the separation of the slow movement from the
mainstream of symphonic argument could no longer serve a useful
purpose. Large-scale Adagio movements in fact do not occur in
Mahler’s middle symphonies. When they reappear, in Das Lied von
der Erde (1907–9) and the Ninth Symphony (1909), they are on a
massive scale as finales. The first movement of the incomplete Tenth
is likewise an immense Adagio, while the first movement of the
Ninth is also predominantly slow. There are signs here of a tendency
to fuse the traditional ingredients of the symphony. But Mahler, still
perhaps in the grip of his Romantic theory of universality, did not
live to follow this tendency to its logical conclusion.
That his Scandinavian contemporaries Sibelius and Nielsen did,

however, follow it up was not simply because they lived longer.
Something decidedly anti-Romantic in their temperaments, a certain
objectivity of stance, prompted them to refine and compress to the
point where the fusion of contrasting elements assumed much
greater importance than the insistence on their individual or
picturesque nature. In the light of what happened after World War I
this was a prophetic attitude. In the Third (1907) and Fourth (1910–
11) Symphonies of Sibelius the anti-rhetorical streak in his nature
already brought a new economy of gesture and form which only
helped increase the force, energy and ultimately even the epic
stature of what was said. Their prophetic character can be seen if
they are compared with other symphonies of the decade before the
war, not only those of Mahler and Skryabin, but Suk’s massive Asrael
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Symphony (1905–6), Rachmaninoff’s sumptuous but very indulgent
Second (1907), and Elgar’s two completed symphonies (1908 and
1910). Elgar was at the height of his powers when he wrote these
works, and they are rightly admired for their uninhibited Romantic
invention, their subtle ambivalence of tone and their brilliant
orchestration. But symphonically they are weakened by rhapsodic
elements which stretch them out to an extravagant length not
justified by a consistent musical impulse. The peremptory grandeur
of Sibelius’s Fourth might be a direct rebuttal of everything that
Elgar’s Second stands for. Yet linguistically Sibelius is hardly in
advance of Elgar. The change is primarily one of attitude. The
artist’s time-honoured amour propre is subjected to ruthless
scrutiny, and everything spurious, pretentious or solipsistic is thrown
out.
After the war Sibelius continued to develop his technique until, in his
Seventh and final symphony (1924), he arrived at the point where
large musical conflicts could truly be resolved in a single-movement
symphony of 20 minutes’ duration. The Seventh is a masterpiece as
compact as it is varied and inspired. Its exact status as a symphony
can moreover be tested against another one-movement masterpiece
Sibelius wrote soon afterwards, the tone poem Tapiola. Though in
one sense more unified than the symphony, since all its material
comes directly from the initial theme, Tapiola precisely for that
reason lacks the dialectical and dynamic force of the symphony. As a
descriptive and imaginative work Tapiola is a considerable
achievement. But it can hardly be denied that the symphony, in
satisfactorily resolving more complicated issues within the same
time-span, is musically and intellectually the more substantial work.
Nielsen, like Sibelius, started by writing four-movement symphonies

along fairly traditional lines. On his first three works in the genre the
influence of Dvořák and Brahms is apparent. But already in no.1
(1890–92) a new direction is taken. Though the work is ‘in’ G minor,
it ends in C, and the composer acknowledged this ambiguity by
opening the symphony with a chord of C major; what follows is,
conceptually speaking, a struggle to affirm an initially doubtful
proposition. But what is most significant is the exuberance and
energy Nielsen brings to that struggle. Here at last is a composer
whose ability to develop his musical ideas is not crippled by
introspection or a gratuitous emotionalism. But it was some years
before Nielsen realized all the implications of this early work. His
Second Symphony (1901–2) keeps the four traditional movements,
while admitting that the arrangement has become a purely external
matter by naming them after the four temperaments of medieval
physiology. As late as the Fourth Symphony (1914–6) Nielsen was
still paying formal court to a quadripartite sequence, though the
work is continuous, with a powerful thrust towards a clinching
tonality which is other than the starting key. A subtitle, ‘The
Inextinguishable’, alludes to what the composer called ‘the
elemental Will of Life’. This life force eventually triumphs graphically
in the Fifth Symphony (1921–2), which represents the forces of
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destruction in a famous side-drum cadenza improvised against the
main second theme, and the triumph of will in two masterly fugues
in which order is finally and conclusively imposed on the material.
That Nielsen’s and Sibelius’s culminating symphonies were both

written after the war is of some importance, since it emphasizes that
their affirmations were, so to speak, properly informed. It would
have been better still if they had been able to go on in the same
spirit. But Nielsen’s last symphony, no.6 (1924–5), is a distraught,
embittered work, and Sibelius wrote nothing of significance after
Tapiola.
2. France and Germany after 1918.

Stephen Walsh
As it is, the shock effect of the war is as well illustrated in the

symphony as in any other artistic medium. Indeed, in the subversive
and unstable atmosphere of the 1920s it was the symphony that
seemed to stand most for pre-war individualism and moral certainty,
values that the New Art set itself to undermine. Avant-garde
composers either did not write symphonies or they wrote
symphonies in which received standards were deliberately outraged.
Milhaud’s six chamber symphonies, written between 1917 and 1923,
are as tiny, emotionally neutral and formally inconsequential as
Mahler’s had been vast, romantic and complex. In 1920 Stravinsky
composed his Symphonies of Wind Instruments, using the plural
form to disarm the inevitable criticism that the work was not a
symphony at all but an experimental arrangement of dissociated
sound-blocks. And in 1924 Prokofiev, whose Symphony no.1 (the so-
called ‘Classical’ of 1917) had charmingly aped the courtesies of
Baroque dance music, snapped back at his Parisian audience with a
dissonant and fearsomely contrapuntal Second Symphony, piquantly
modelled on Beethoven’s C minor Piano Sonata op.111. In Germany,
the former home of the symphony, the genre went through its
dimmest phase. Almost the only notable symphonies composed there
in the 1920s and early 30s were Pfitzner’s First (1932), the earlier of
Weill’s two interesting and well-wrought symphonies (1921) and, in
Austria, the Third Symphony (1927–8) of the romantically inclined
Franz Schmidt and Webern’s exquisite 12-note Symphony for nine
instruments (1927–8), which must, for the purposes of this article,
be regarded as a chamber work. This list speaks for itself. It contains
not a single name of importance in the history of the symphony. The
Weill piece, an eclectic one-movement work influenced by Busoni
and the two principal Modernists of the day, Stravinsky and
Schoenberg, almost inevitably substitutes academic solidness for
compelling structural energy (unlike his more assured neo-classical
Second Symphony of 1933). Schmidt’s late symphonies illustrate in a
different way the dilemma of German music in the postwar years.
His long, tragic, hauntingly beautiful Fourth (1932–3) yearns
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nostalgically for the age of Mahler, Reger and the young Strauss.
The year of its composition is thus as significant as the year of
Schmidt’s death, 1939.
3. Stravinsky; France after 1930.

Stephen Walsh
In France, as in Germany, many leading avant-garde figures of the

1920s made their peace with the symphony, but the truce was never
more than partial and always apparently contingent on some
compromise of their modernity. In France the reconciliation started
soon in the 1930s. Stravinsky’s Symphonie de psaumes (1930),
though fully choral and in no way formally indebted to the
symphonic tradition, has nevertheless the force of a symphony in its
combination of a strong formal thrust with a deep unity of material.
What it does not attempt is any conventional symphonic process of
conflict or resolution. The substance of things hoped for is already,
for Stravinsky as for St Paul, faith; and it is the music’s neo-Baroque
religious symbolism, its fugues and spiralling ostinatos, that supply
both the power and, ultimately, the stability. The work is a
masterpiece sui generis, as is a later and more massive symphony of
a quasi-religious character, Messiaen’s Turangalîla-symphonie
(1946–8), one of whose musical ancestors is Stravinsky’s
Symphonies of Wind Instruments. Turangalîla is a difficult work to
place in the history of the symphony, being devoid of the dialectical
properties one instinctively associates with the genre, though by no
means without development, thematic extension or indeed drama.
Its later companions, Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum and La
Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ, no longer carry the
generic designation. Stravinsky’s own later orchestral symphonies,
in C (1938–40) and in Three Movements (1945), are a clear attempt
to revive the symmetries and contrasts of the high Classical
symphony. Their technical and imaginative brilliance may tend to
conceal the fact that their specifically symphonic procedures (such
as the sonata form of the Symphony in C first movement) are as
allusive as the Baroque elements in Dumbarton Oaks. So far from
the procedures arising from the nature of the material, they form
part of the material itself. Whether, as some think, this rules them
out of the history of the symphony or alternatively invites us to
redefine it is a question that it may still be too early to answer. They
are certainly among the finest 20th-century works to carry the
generic title.
Among Stravinsky’s French or French-based contemporaries,

Milhaud and Honegger both turned to symphonic writing proper in
the 1930s. Like so much of his music, Milhaud’s 12 symphonies
display the essentially conversational character of his talent, and
where they aspire to conventional symphonic ‘stature’ they clearly
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overstep the plausible limits of their content. In any case, Milhaud’s
style remained static, picturesque, anecdotal, perhaps modestly
hieratic.
Honegger wrote five symphonies between 1930 and his death in

1955. As a group they show how irrelevant this serious-minded
German-Swiss composer’s association with the subversive Parisian
Six had been. His symphonies are tensely argued, harmonically
crabbed essays, at first still dependent on the chugging rhythms of
orthodox neo-classicism, later adopting a more polyphonic style
propelled with a certain diabolic energy. As music they are more
determined than inspired, and certainly lack the combination of
variety and finesse that still brings the third and fourth symphonies
of Roussel (1929–30 and 1934) the occasional performance.
Roussel’s Third was composed for the same occasion – the 50th
anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra – as Honegger’s
First, with which it has superficial points in common. But Roussel’s
eclecticism was broader, more urbane and productive than
Honegger’s, incorporating something of that burlesque humour
which had always been so alien to Honegger, along with more
orthodox ingredients of the traditional symphony. At its best
Roussel’s symphonic writing is lucid and exhilarating, though it can
seem artificial and melodically insipid. Roussel is probably best seen
as a modern descendant of that classic French 19th-century type,
the academic symphonist, for his mastery of procedure generally
outstripped his imaginative flair.
4. Hindemith.
Stephen Walsh
While the symphony in France thus struggled back to life, in

Germany and Austria it must have seemed quite dead; here more
than anywhere one can see how the erosion of secure social values
had undercut the received forms of art. Thus Schmidt’s Fourth
Symphony, weary in style and content, was a fitting epitaph to an old
order. Strauss and Pfitzner, Germany’s two most distinguished
composers, were symphonically spent. Of the younger figures,
Hartmann and Blacher were delayed by Nazism, while Krenek,
having produced three noisy and dissonant symphonies in Berlin in
the early 1920s, retired to his native Vienna on the proceeds of the
opera Jonny spielt auf and came under the influence of Schoenberg.
The one shining light in the darkness was Hindemith, and it is apt
that the darkness comprehended him not. Hindemith’s avant-
gardism in the 1920s had mainly been of an academic rather than
ideological cast, and by the early 1930s he was at work on an opera,
Mathis der Maler, which specifically argued that the artist should
concern himself above all with art and not interfere in politics. For
reasons not directly connected with its subject, this opera was
obstructed by the Nazis. However, in 1934 Furtwängler conducted a
three-movement symphony excerpted from it, and this was to be the
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first of a line of symphonic masterpieces in which Hindemith re-
established his place in the classic line of German instrumental
composers. Like Stravinsky, Hindemith drew heavily on Baroque
phraseology, but his symphonies (eight in number if the Symphonic
Metamorphosis and the Sinfonietta are included) are traditional in
that they basically follow Classical and 19th-century formal
procedures, and modern in that they are entirely true to Hindemith’s
personal manner of expression, from which they derive their vitality.
Of the later symphonies the most notable are the Symphony in E♭
(1940) and the symphony from the opera Die Harmonie der Welt
(1951). Hindemith’s symphonies are tonal, with an admixture of 4th-
based harmony, and indeed are energetically so. In the Mathis der
Maler symphony (1934), for instance, the first movement derives
much fuel from the tension between G major and its relative Lydian
C on the one hand, and D♭–F♯ on the other, D♭ being the key both of
the introductory chorale and of the final apotheosis, while the
second subject of the first movement is in F♯. Hindemith’s writing is
rhythmically sometimes stereotyped, but he handled counterpoint
like a master, in which respect his ancestry can be traced directly
from the last great classical German symphony, Brahms’s Fourth.
5. The USA.
Stephen Walsh
Like many contemporary composers, Hindemith spent World War II

in the USA. This exodus, while culturally damaging for Europe, was
undoubtedly of immense benefit to America. There the absence of a
truly indigenous musical tradition had the initial effect of
encouraging not the invention of new formal prototypes but, on the
contrary, the adoption of established European types. Thus for
example Henry Cowell, whose outrageous cluster technique
influenced Bartók and through him a whole younger generation of
European composers, wrote some 21 symphonies, though their
naive, primitive exoticism is far from the European idea of
symphonic style. That the academic tradition of the symphony was,
from the 1930s, embodied substantially in American music is beyond
question.
Cowell himself was influenced by Ives, whose biographer he was.

But it has to be remembered that, in the main, Ives’s music was not
known before the late 1920s, and not widely known until long after
that. His tumultuous Fourth Symphony, one of the earliest examples
of pluralism and collage in music, was completed in 1916 but not
heard in full until 1965. After World War I the main impulse towards
a new American music came, paradoxically, from Paris, where
Copland, Harris and Piston all studied with Nadia Boulanger.
Copland remained the most cosmopolitan, and that is perhaps
precisely why he wrote the fewest symphonies. The Third (1944–6) is
an imposing work of epic-romantic proportions, but the so-called
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‘Short’ Symphony (no.2, 1932–3) is by a long way the more
interesting: a rather anti-heroic work that draws attention to small
symphonic processes and eschews rhetoric.
Copland would certainly have been the last composer, on this form,
to use the symphony to embody the ‘American Dream’. That was left
instead to Roy Harris, whose seven orchestral symphonies seem to
express the pioneer’s religious faith in his mission, its honest
purpose and sure outcome. His one-movement Third (1937) is
famous and outstandingly the best. It remains the locus classicus of
that muscular prairie romanticism which subsequent American
symphonists took over with such effortless self-confidence. The
strength of this manner is best shown in the tremendous diatonic
thrust of Harris’s piece, and in Piston’s more sophisticated and
technically correct symphonies. Its limitations loom balefully in
Harris’s own later symphonies, especially the Fifth (1942), whose
primitivism is forced and therefore pointless, and in the nine
symphonies of his pupil, William Schuman, where the muscle-flexing
has moved into the boardroom and been transformed into a glib and
polished oratory somewhat out of touch with the plain morality that
once justified it. Schuman never cured a tendency to bully the ear.
But his symphonies are expertly assembled and still show the benefit
of that formal compression which Harris and Copland took with
them from Europe.
The above are, broadly, the tonal school of early 20th-century

American symphonists. To them one must add Barber, whose
brilliant if slightly bombastic First Symphony (1936) in one
movement shares the unbroken momentum of Harris’s Third; the
younger Bernstein, Mennin and Persichetti; the gifted Mexican
Carlos Chávez, whose Sinfonía India (1935–6), also in one
movement, is one of the best adaptations of exotic folk materials to a
symphonic form; and finally the Czech-born, Paris-trained Martinů,
whose six symphonies were all composed in the USA after his
emigration there in 1941. In Paris, Martinů picked up a liking for
brisk motor rhythms. But the essentials of his style are Czech: the
eloquent string cantilenas, the chattering ostinato motivic fabric and
the drifting cross-rhythms, which are both Martinů’s trademark and,
at times of failing inspiration, his mannerism. Like Dvořák he wrote
nostalgically about his native Bohemia from distant New York, and
like Dvořák he owed much to Brahms (see for instance his use of
orchestral antiphony in the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies) as well as
something to his adopted American compatriots.
About the American tonal symphonists in general there is perhaps a

certain excess heartiness. It may be that in the last resort the most
interesting American symphonist is the subtle and introspective
Roger Sessions. Sessions’s First Symphony, written in Europe in
1926–7, is neo-classical with some flavour of jazz. But thereafter his
symphonies are increasingly chromatic, atonal and (from 1953)
dodecaphonic. Unlike Riegger, whose Fourth Symphony (1956) tries
to crystallize a tonal sense from 12-note ingredients, Sessions always
accepted the consequences of his style, though it rapidly took him
into areas where the traditional idea of symphonic writing – so basic
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for Harris, Piston and Schuman – could hardly function. Since the
Second (1944–6), all Sessions’s symphonies have had an inward-
going as well as onward-going character, and sometimes their
density of texture and equivocal sense of direction may call to mind
the later music of Elliott Carter. But with Sessions line and pulse,
though shifting, are always clear, and shape is never obscured by
detail. The fact that the shape itself does not culminate in the
traditional way is a modern but not necessarily unsymphonic quality;
in the Eighth Symphony, for example, the concluding reprise of the
opening music has the effect not of invalidating the intervening
discourse but of setting it in a new dimension – one familiar from
opera, where an aria may hold up the action in order to detail a
character’s feelings without endangering the general sense of
continuity.
6. Britain.
Stephen Walsh
Britain has also had atonal symphonists, but they have not in the
main evolved forms that arise properly from the special character of
the materials and procedures. Searle’s five symphonies suffer from
stereotyped gestures that belong to a Romantic idiom; Bennett and
McCabe, among younger composers, have written symphonies of
much surface brilliance, while in the symphonies of Fricker, Goehr,
Hoddinott and Frankel there is solid and coherent invention. But
perhaps the most impressive figure in this category is the
underrated William Alwyn, whose dark but forthright neo-
Romanticism gives his symphonies something of the sweep of the
American tonal school, though the basis of his style is strictly
speaking atonal. Alwyn certainly has little in common with Sessions
(more perhaps with Piston), whereas a Schoenberg pupil, Roberto
Gerhard, who was born in Spain but lived in England after the Civil
War, is like Sessions at least in having evolved an autonomous and
self-contained symphonic style out of dodecaphony, though the
glittering surface of his third (1960) and fourth (1967) symphonies,
with their skilful, extrovert arrangement of block textures and
collage and their coruscating instrumentation, may conceal little of a
more searching nature.
By contrast the tonal symphonic tradition has a secure base in the

music of Elgar and of Vaughan Williams, whose nine symphonies
astonishingly span the years 1910 to 1957. Vaughan Williams’s
popularity, and his quasi-paternal status, have tended to obscure the
unevenness of his output. But the central block of four symphonies,
from the Pastoral Symphony (no.3, 1921) to no.6 (1944–7), are
sufficient witness to his originality and visionary power. It was once
fashionable to praise the bellicose Fourth (1931–4) and Sixth at the
expense of the other two. Indeed they are fine achievements, and the
desolate epilogue to the Sixth particularly exemplifies the
ambivalent, enigmatic strain that Vaughan Williams shared with
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Holst, and which has proved the least imitable aspect of both
(compare, for example, the tortuous reflectiveness of another ‘post-
Tudor’ symphonist, Rubbra; and, on the other side of the coin, the
blatant tub-thumping in the finale of Walton’s First (1935), an
otherwise compelling and individual score influenced in sound
rather than method by Sibelius). But the Third and Fifth (1938–43)
are surely bolder and more remarkable. The Pastoral Symphony,
while indebted to French influences achieved a private, mystical
rural vision which could well support the music’s superficial
monotony of harmony and movement. In the Fifth Vaughan Williams
placed this achievement on a specifically spiritual plane by allusion
to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (there are superscriptions from
Bunyan in the score, and some of the music later reappeared in
Vaughan Williams’s opera on the subject); here again static
harmonies and flowing, unvarying rhythms serve an essentially
contemplative end.
That such qualities are not to be mistaken for dullness may be seen
by comparing these two symphonies with the once-admired seven by
Bax. Bax also strove for a mystical union with nature, but through a
language of a distinctly neurotic character, in which unsettled
harmonies lead the music not towards any clearly envisaged
destination but into rambling byways from which Bax was often
apparently powerless to extricate himself or his listeners. A more
emphatic symphonist of that generation is Havergal Brian, who lived
to the age of 96 and completed 32 symphonies, all but 11 of them
after his 80th birthday. Brian’s idiom is more compact and functional
than Bax’s, though his earlier symphonies are on a large scale. Its
rhetorical gestures have a certain force, without, however,
concealing that Brian’s creative technique is defective in various
respects: for instance, his development of ideas is often shortwinded,
and certain types of music seem beyond his grasp (a ‘gritty’ Allegro
and a menacing or elegiac tone prevail). At his best, however, in for
instance the Sixth Symphony (1947–8), he merits attention, if not the
ludicrous panegyrics he once attracted.
One of his admirers, Robert Simpson, was himself the author of 11

fine symphonies, influenced at first by Nielsen, later by a more
direct wish to restore the formal, harmonic and above all spiritual
values of Beethoven. Curiously, the same preoccupation underlies
Tippett’s vocal Third Symphony (1970–72), here masked by an irony
absent from its two very different predecessors (1945 and 1957),
and also the compact, single-movement Fourth (1976–7). From the
first Tippett was a pathfinding genius, whereas the ambitions of his
contemporaries, Rawsthorne and Berkeley, each the author of three
finely crafted symphonies, were always more modest. Even Britten,
however, generally fought shy of the symphony, though his two
unequivocal essays in the genre, the Sinfonia da requiem (1939–40)
and the Symphony for Cello and Orchestra (1963), both show
mastery of the difficult art of manipulating symphonic materials over
a large canvas and in purely abstract terms, while the kaleidoscopic
Spring Symphony (1949) is more in the nature of a choral–orchestral
song cycle. Of a younger generation only the Australian-born
Williamson has shown, in his highly original modal–serial Second
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Symphony (1968–9), any serious desire to reconcile modern non-
directional procedures (influenced by Messiaen) with traditional
symphonic form.
7. Scandinavia after Nielsen.

Stephen Walsh
In Scandinavia, likewise, the main tendency since the 1920s has

been to support the traditional status of the symphony rather than to
transplant it to a wholly new aesthetic. This is in keeping with the
achievements of Sibelius and Nielsen themselves, and it evidently
incurs the risk of epigonism, which only the strongest personalities
have survived. In Finland, Sibelius has dominated the prevailing
style to such an extent that among local symphonists only Kokkonen
has produced much of distinctive character (his Third Symphony of
1967 has a Sibelian economy but is gesturally original). In Sweden
and Denmark, on the other hand, Sibelius has had a more helpful
impact, while Nielsen has been relatively less copied. This is chiefly
for methodological reasons. Sibelius’s austere motivic devices could
be adapted, in theory at least, to any musical idiom, whereas
Nielsen’s more expansive formal procedures could be sustained only
by a style as rhetorical as his own, which seems to have been
generally thought inappropriate and was certainly hard to copy
without plagiarism. In Denmark the first outstanding symphonist
after Nielsen was a Sibelian, Vagn Holmboe, whose symphonies
brilliantly invest the master’s rigorous thematic methods with a
pulsating energy that obviously springs from neo-classicism and yet
sounds quite fresh and personal. Holmboe’s Eighth Symphony
(1951–2) exemplifies his muscular and for the most part sparing way
of developing short themes which often act, though never purely
mechanically, as ostinatos.
Of the Swedish symphonists the most notable active around the mid-
century were Hilding Rosenberg and K.-B. Blomdahl. Both are
eclectics, as is their lesser compatriot Wirén. Rosenberg was
influenced for a time by Schoenberg, and his style is at once denser
and more lyrical than Holmboe’s, though still often recalling both
Sibelius and Nielsen. His six symphonies vary enormously in scale.
Blomdahl flirted with more up-to-date influences, but not always so
discriminatingly. His last symphony (no.3, ‘Facets’, 1948) is a
reasonably compact piece with arresting moments rather than
compelling momentum.
8. The USSR: Shostakovich.

Stephen Walsh
Page 84 of 94
While the poverty of symphonic writing in France and Germany
between the wars reflected the general social instability as much as
a confusion over aesthetic values, the rise of the symphony in the
USA and Scandinavia has a mainly artistic background. Where music
was shallow-rooted it needed careful and traditional husbandry. In
the USSR, by contrast, the symphony, though associated with a
discarded past, nevertheless survived but under new colours – those
of the ideological programme symphony, a genre that skirts the
disputed borderlands of the cantata, the symphonic poem and the
‘pure’ symphony. That a totalitarian regime should be suspicious of
abstract music is to be expected; but the Russian preference would
in any case be for a documentary type of symphony, and the really
damaging aspect of Soviet interference in music was its insistence
on popularistic styles and unremitting optimism of content.
The baleful history of socialist realism is redeemed almost solely by

the genius of Shostakovich and the honesty of Myaskovsky. They
appear to be the only Soviet symphonists who struggled to reconcile
a personal expressive impulse with the declared needs of a society to
which they acknowledged allegiance. To them must be added
Prokofiev, whose last three symphonies (nos.5–7) were composed
after his return to the USSR in 1933. But Prokofiev, a lyrical melodist
of Tchaikovskian stamp and a brilliantly original orchestrator, had no
difficulty in reverting to an accessible idiom (he probably did so with
relief), while his international fame allowed him comparative
freedom of genre until the Zhdanov purges of 1948, from which no
composer of talent was exempt.
Myaskovsky, though not a composer of the first rank, is an

interesting eclectic figure whose 27 symphonies do not all deserve
neglect. A pupil of Glier, he was influenced also by Liszt, Skryabin
and Mahler, and his early symphonies productively, if too
remorselessly, counterpoint an excitable sensibility with a rhetorical
revolutionary optimism, which in the 1920s must have seemed a
highly satisfactory channelling of creative energy. But Myaskovsky
was troubled by a pessimistic cast of mind, which comes out in the
perfunctory (but Tchaikovsky-like) Symphony no.21 (1940) and its
Lisztian companion, the so-called Symphonic Ballad (no.22, 1941),
whose triumphant ending has a decidedly spurious air. From such
dilemmas Myaskovsky retreated into a folksy academicism, though
even that was not colourless enough for Zhdanov.
Shostakovich, by contrast, kept up to the end the struggle between

his personal introspection and pessimism and the official cultural
dogma of clarity, simplicity and optimism. His 15 symphonies come
from both sides; yet not one of them is without interest and there is
never any abject sacrifice of quality, though the output is inevitably
unequal and sometimes contains misjudgments. The documentary
symphonies are nos.2 and 3 (1927 and 1929), which belong to the
early revolutionary period before the denunciation of the opera Lady
Macbeth of Mtsensk, and are still modernistic in character; no.7
(1941), the so-called ‘Leningrad’, which Bartók parodied in a famous
passage of his Concerto for Orchestra; and nos.11 and 12 (1956–7
Page 85 of 94
and 1959–61), which describe respectively the revolutions of 1905
and 1917. That Shostakovich was genuinely engaged with these
subjects is repeatedly shown by the quality of the music (for instance
in the wonderfully atmospheric first movement of no.11). His most
personal symphonies, however, are no.1 (1924–5), a brilliant student
work influenced by Hindemith, Prokofiev and perhaps Bartók; no.4
(withdrawn in 1936 but released for performance in the early
1960s); nos.6 and 10 (1939 and 1953); and the vocal–orchestral
symphonies nos.13 and 14 (1962 and 1969). The other scores
(including the popular Fifth of 1937) – ‘a Soviet composer’s answer
to just criticism’ after his withdrawal of no.4 – come somewhere in
between, in that they are abstract works that nevertheless show
certain effects of state ideology. Technically it might even be said
that nos.5 and 8 (1943) are (with no.10) Shostakovich’s best works.
But they do not exactly define his position as a modern symphonist.
It was once tempting to see Shostakovich as the natural successor to

the great post-Romantic intellectual symphonists, Sibelius, Nielsen
and Mahler. But this is borne out by neither the technique nor the
philosophy of his most original music. The influence of Mahler has
been much remarked in his large symphonies, but a movement like
the first of no.10, perhaps his most completely successful, is closer
to Nielsen in its slow but inexorable linear build-up to a powerful
dramatic climax. There is a comparable effect in the first movement
of no.6. But Shostakovich was often unsuccessful in achieving such
sustained tension by purely contrapuntal means, and when he did so
one is left with a feeling of exhaustion quite different from the
exhilaration and transcendence of Nielsen’s best work. Moreover,
such movements are slow-moving in Shostakovich. For him, quick
music usually fulfilled either a cathartic or a satirical function, or
followed the purely conventional Prokofiev ‘motor’ scherzo. This
raises the important question of his musical philosophy. Where
Nielsen was, broadly, an epic composer, and Sibelius was more or
less neutral over such questions, Shostakovich was unquestionably,
in himself, anti-heroic, sceptical and pessimistic. The parodistic tone
of the First Symphony, the strangely whimsical finale of the Sixth,
the witty, classical Ninth coming at a time when a ‘Victory’
symphony was expected (1945), the enigmatic, quicksilver finale of
no.10, and the barely relieved sardonic pessimism of the Babiy-Yar
Symphony, no.13: all these fascinating works show that for
Shostakovich there were no clear solutions or final triumphs, only
tragedy, irony, moral uncertainty and, in the song cycle no.14, death.
9. Eastern Europe.
Stephen Walsh
That Shostakovich never lost his sense of artistic truth under the
most trying personal circumstances stands to his credit. His
achievement is all the greater in the light of the almost complete
failure of other gifted composers to survive the final ideological
Page 86 of 94
battering administered through Zhdanov by Stalin. Outside Russia,
in the smaller eastern European countries, music went through its
bleakest phase after World War II. The specific stylistic données of
socialist realism, coupled with the loss of contact with new music in
western Europe, stifled original creative work, and continued to do
so for some years after the general liberalization in the middle and
late 1950s. The point may be illustrated by comparing the Polish
composer Lutosławski’s First Symphony, which had its first
performance in 1948, with its epoch-making successor. Though the
earlier work is skilful and effective, it lacks the exploratory power,
brilliance and intellectual conviction of the Second, completed in
1967 – a score that dazzlingly combines aleatory procedures
(admittedly of a comparatively controlled type) with clear and
forthright dialectical thinking. The Second Symphony’s distinctive
two-movement form – an episodic, almost anti-symphonic movement,
with virtually no developmental inclination, followed by a more
conventionally symphonic, forward-driven argument – was taken and
adapted (with the addition of an introduction, epilogue and coda) for
the Third (1981–3) with if anything even more powerful results. And
if the melodic breadth of the epilogue’s cantando theme and the
increased harmonic clarity evident in the work as a whole was read
by some as portending a move in the direction of neo-romanticism,
such suspicions were dispelled by the Fourth (1988–92), which yields
nothing to its predecessor either in terms of formal innovation or the
sophistication of its technical arsenal. The other noteworthy Polish
symphonist of Lutosławski’s generation, Panufnik, produced just one
acknowledged essay in the genre, the entertaining if eccentric
Sinfonia rustica (1948), before fleeing to England in 1954. His nine
further symphonies – the geometric and precisely chiselled Sinfonia
sacra (1963) and Sinfonia di sfere (1976) as much as the later, more
Romantic Ninth (1986, revised 1987) and Tenth (1988, revised 1990)
– benefit eclectically from a wide range of influences.
In the other east European countries there have been many

symphonists but few of note. The Hungarian Kadosa has composed
eight symphonies of which the last four, written in the 1960s in a
quasi-serial idiom, are more impressive than their predecessors.
Kodály’s solitary late Symphony in C (1961) is by comparison a
feeble essay in an evidently uncongenial form and neo-classical style.
The three symphonies of the Czech composer Iša Krejčí, especially
the witty Second (1956), are much more successful and likable.
Kabeláč has written symphonies of a relatively ambitious cast, but
lacking subtlety or true originality.
10. Germany after World War II.

Stephen Walsh
That composers in the communist bloc should have begun to take in

advanced technical and stylistic influences without completely
slipping their traditionalist anchors is heartening, but perhaps less
so than the modest postwar revival of the symphony in the countries
Page 87 of 94
where it once seemed completely moribund, above all Germany (but
also France, where Dutilleux produced two fine, somewhat balletic
symphonies). In Germany the renascence was initiated, significantly,
in 1940 by Karl Amadeus Hartmann, in a vocal–orchestral symphony,
Versuch eines Requiem, to poems by Whitman. Hartmann seems to
have opposed the Nazis with some courage, and his style, even
during the war, shows openness to influences regarded as anathema
by the cultural authorities, notably Mahler and Berg. After the war
Hartmann wrote seven more symphonies, always in a complex but
translucent atonal style animated now and then by the influence of
Stravinsky and Bartók, and later that of Henze’s Italian period, with
its saturated counterpoint. Henze’s own first five symphonies are no
less eclectic, though the fusion of serial and neo-classical ingredients
which they share with Hartmann is in the end quite personal (it
shows, however, the influence of Henze’s teacher Fortner, whose
own Symphony (1947) made a big impact in West Germany after the
war). But Henze lacks the intellectual rigour of the born symphonist,
and the best of these earlier works, the Fourth Symphony (1955, but
largely taken from the opera König Hirsch), is successful because its
music is intoxicatingly beautiful rather than because its single half-
hour movement has a really strong formal impulse. Soon after his
turn to communism (in about 1966) Henze wrote a Sixth Symphony
(1969), also in a single movement and with a large orchestra
deployed as two distinct chamber orchestras; again the work
depends as much on imaginative exuberance as on any real binding
together of its heterogeneous materials, which include Cuban
popular dance. With his Seventh (1983–4), which followed after
almost a 15-year gap, Henze returned to a more traditional, Classical
formal conception, but in far from a carefree neo-classical spirit: not
even the opening allemande is free of violent outbursts, and the final
movement, an ‘orchestral setting’ of Hölderlin’s bleak and
pessimistic late poem ‘Hälfte des Lebens’, reaches a truly terrifying
climax. Henze’s next two works in the genre followed an outwardly
Beethovenian trajectory: an Eighth (1992–3) that is both shorter and
lighter in mood (inspired by scenes from A Midsummer Night’s
Dream) followed by a choral Ninth (1995–7). The latter, predictably,
is no ‘Ode to Joy’, its libretto based on Anna Segher’s novel about
fugitives from Third Reich, Das siebte Kreuz. But it nonetheless
provides further confirmation of the nature of Henze’s
traditionalism, which is not at all the cultural rigor mortis of which
the 20th century saw too much, but a feeling for history as a living
and continuing process.
11. The survival of the symphony.

Charles Wilson
By no means all the composers who rose to prominence in the 1950s

and 60s shared Henze’s belief in the symphony. To composers
forging a brave new language in the aftermath of World War II the
traditional preoccupations of symphonic writing – thematic
development, tonal focus and unified architecture – seemed obsolete
Page 88 of 94
and irrelevant. And, as a result, many significant composers of the
later (as of the earlier) 20th century chose to neglect the medium
altogether. One of the most significant developments of the 1970s
and 80s, however, was the turn to the symphony by a number of
composers hitherto identified with the avant garde. With the
hegemony of modernist aesthetics now challenged, the attractions of
the genre became increasingly evident to composers of a neo-
romantic persuasion. By no means all the fresh converts were
adherents of the ‘new tonality’. Others explored the symphony’s
formal possibilities in new and innovative ways, aiming to revive its
developmental potentialities using a post-tonal language that
employed individual strategies for creating pitch focus and
centricity. Still others, meanwhile, sought to harness it once more as
a programmatic vehicle, or as a medium for political or other forms
of public statement.
The first symphonies of Penderecki and Górecki, the two most

significant Polish exponents of the genre after Lutosławski, were
uncompromisingly modernist in orientation. With his Second, the
‘Christmas’ Symphony (1979–80), however, Penderecki fully
embraced an austere, monumental tonal idiom, with allegiances to
Bruckner and occasionally Mahler. Górecki’s output saw no such
sudden stylistic rupture: nonetheless his Third, the Symphony of
Sorrowful Songs (1976), is marked by a new melodic directness,
connected with the use of authentic Polish folk melodies in the outer
movements, and a sparing use of orchestral forces which stands in
sharp contrast to the massed orchestral effects of his first two
symphonies. Like Górecki, the Finnish composer Rautavaara passed
through a personal 12-note idiom, eventually arriving at a visionary
neo-romantic language that featured elements of modal archaism
(stemming ultimately from Orthodox chant) occasionally coupled
with a discreet use of aleatory and sonoristic techniques. Other
symphonists who have achieved a highly personal stylistic synthesis
include the Estonian Arvo Pärt, whose Third Symphony (1971)
provided one of the first manifestations of the austere spirituality
that would characterize his later, predominantly vocal output, and
the Georgian Giya Kancheli, who unlike Pärt never experimented
with serialism but instead turned to his emotionally direct idiom
after training in the lingua franca of official Soviet music. His five
symphonies of the 1970s (nos.2–6) are unconventional in form, and
draw on Georgian folk music and Orthodox chant.
In Russia the composer widely regarded as Shostakovich’s natural

heir was Alfred Schnittke. Written around the same time as
Shostakovich’s Symphony no.15 (1971), with its disruptive
quotations of Wagner and Rossini, Schnittke’s First Symphony
(1969–72) was one of his earliest experiments in what he later
dubbed ‘polystylism’. The work sets fragments of Haydn, Beethoven,
Chopin and others alongside jazz and improvisational episodes, but
in a spirit of anxiety and despair rather than celebration. While these
polystylistic excesses were revisited in the Third Symphony (1980),
the Second (1979) and Fourth (1983), both choral symphonies,
sought a more thoroughgoing absorption of their diverse musical
sources, in the latter case drawn from Jewish, Lutheran and
Page 89 of 94
Orthodox traditions. The later, purely orchestral symphonies (nos.7–
9) draw closer to Austro-German models, Bruckner and Mahler
especially, but here the debt is apparent more in instrumental
gesture than in actual borrowed material.
The overwrought intensity of much Russian polystylism has a tone

distinctly remote from the disengaged and objective attitude that
characterized European and American brands of stylistic pluralism
in the 1970s and 80s. The restless experimentation apparent in the
nine symphonies of Ib Nørholm composed up to 1990 resulted in
abrupt discontinuities both within and between individual works.
The Fourth Symphony of Jonathan Lloyd (1988) and the First of Poul
Ruders (1989) likewise operate within a wide frame of reference that
stretches in the former to Latin American dance rhythms and in the
latter to American minimalism. An important European precursor for
these polyglot displays had been the third movement of Berio’s
Sinfonia (1968–9), which pastes a variety of musical quotations (from
Beethoven to Stockhausen) onto a stripped-down version of the
scherzo from Mahler’s Second Symphony, creating a self-reflexive
musical commentary on the genre and its history to parallel the
(largely Beckett-derived) spoken commentary of six amplified
vocalists. But whereas the outer movements of Sinfonia leave no
doubt as to the nature of the composer’s own authentic (and still
essentially modernist) musical voice, the all-pervading presence of
allusion and quotation in such works as Rochberg’s Symphony no.3
(1966–9) and Bolcom’s more recent Symphony no.5 (1990) effaces
any such sense of a personal stylistic idiom. Or else the personal
idiom is itself impersonal, close enough to pastiche to allow
quotations to be woven in with minimal sense of stylistic rupture.
To other composers, the notion of a ‘pure’, absolute symphonic

discourse has retained its appeal. For Nørgård in his Second (1970)
and Third (1975) Symphonies the pursuit of such a discourse
involved a preoccupation with highly personal constructivist
processes, notably those associated with the ‘infinity’ series, whose
compositional deployment through multiple layers of an orchestral
texture yields remarkably lucid and compelling results. In 1978
Peter Maxwell Davies produced the first example of his new,
characteristically atmospheric but essentially abstract symphonic
language. Davies, who had consolidated his reputation in the
previous decade with a series of aggressive and expressionistic
music-theatre works, continued to employ the constructivist
techniques of melodic transformation (of plainchant especially) that
had characterized those earlier works. But the seven numbered
symphonies he had produced by 2000 aimed above all to re-create a
formal dialectic in the tradition of Beethoven and Sibelius, one in
which the conflict of opposed pitch centres plays a pivotal role.
Ultimately, though, Davies’s still essentially post-tonal harmonic
language fails to provide sufficiently potent means with which to
establish these tonal centres and their functional roles, and the
symphonic argument forfeits much of its dynamism and momentum
as a result. Ironically perhaps, what was arguably the most
persuasive example of sustained symphonic writing from an English
composer in these years was not formally designated a symphony at
Page 90 of 94
all: Maw’s Odyssey (1972–85), at just under 100 minutes in length,
stakes a plausible claim to be the longest unbroken movement for
orchestra ever composed.
While some have continued to grapple with the kinds of formal

questions traditionally regarded as symphonic, others have applied
the generic title to works which subvert just about all, including
more recently established, expectations of the genre. The
characteristically ascetic Fourth (1985–7) and Fifth Symphonies
(1989–90) of Galina Ustvol′skaya are scored not for orchestra but for
small instrumental ensemble and solo voice (a contralto in no.4, a
speaker in no.5). And while Gubaydulina’s expansive 12-movement
symphony Stimmen … verstummen (1986) embodies at its centre a
portion of gracefully animated silence in the form of a cadenza for
conductor alone, a number of the eccentric aleatory essays (many
additionally designated ‘orchestral diary sheets’) of Leif Segerstam
dispense with the conductor altogether. The symphonies of Glenn
Branca (11 composed by 1998) are among the few to make extended
use of electronic instruments and non-standard tunings. Other
composers have used the symphonic medium for different kinds of
‘extra-musical’ statement, whether personal (Corigliano’s Symphony
no.1, 1988–9, an elegy for victims of AIDS) or ceremonial (Tan Dun’s
Symphony 1997, commemorating the return of Hong Kong to
Chinese sovereignty). Again the designation of symphony is often
loosely applied; and, with the occasional pieces, the risk as always is
that they will fail to outlive their immediate purpose.
That many symphonies of the late 20th century, even those devoid of
consciously ironic intent, seem to mimic rather than genuinely re-
create a truly dialectical symphonic discourse may be a symptom of
compositional weakness. Yet it may also be a symptom of the
jadedness of commentators and listeners amid the omnipresence of a
‘permanent literature’ whose gestures have become all too familiar.
The symphony finds itself in an increasingly contested market-place,
one of commercial recordings as much as live performances, in
which the new has always to contend with the old, and even the not
so old: the appetite for neo-romanticism in the 1980s was fed not
only by new works but also by the revival of music from earlier in the
century, such as that of Allan Pettersson (championed in Germany as
much as in his native Sweden), the Estonian-born Eduard Tubin and
in England Robert Simpson and, more controversially, George Lloyd.
As was emphasized by Alexander Goehr in his BBC Reith lectures of
1987, the ‘survival of the symphony’ is ultimately bound up with the
survival of the institution that has nurtured it, the symphony concert.
And while that institution remains, at bottom, inherently
conservative, it cannot be guaranteed that this mutual dependence
will be entirely positive in its consequences.
Bibliography
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Page 91 of 94
N. Slonimsky: Music since 1900 (New York, 1937, 5/1994)
G. Abraham: A Hundred Years of Music (London, 1938, 4/1974)
A. Salazar: La musica moderna (Buenos Aires, 1944; Eng. trans. as

Music in our Time, 1946/R)
W. Mellers: Studies in Contemporary Music (London, 1947/R)
R. Hill, ed.: The Symphony (Harmondsworth, 1949)
B. Shore: Sixteen Symphonies (London, 1949)
K. Blaukopf, ed.: Lexikon der Symphonie (Teufen and Cologne, 1952)
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Zeit zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen (Regensburg, 1984)
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1999)
Page 94 of 94

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Symphony (Fr. simphonie, symphonie; Ger.

A term now normally taken to signify an extended work for

The immediate antecedent of the modern symphony is commonly

The most characteristic use of the symphony, however, was as part of

Whether it was a private academy or a public concert, the principal

Symphonies during the 18th century were usually transmitted in

Symphonies in the 18th century appear under a large number of

Two final problems with symphony sources concern anonymous

Regarding misattributions, while frauds relating to Haydn may

Beginning about 1730 one begins to find symphonies a 6 for strings

A familiar question arises over the introduction of the minuet and

First movements (and many finales) of 18th-century symphonies

In contrast to these binary or binary-based plans, some of the

Sonata form as found in the 18th-century symphony should be

Three particular variants of sonata form should be mentioned here.

A second variant is the movement type in which the recapitulation

Although many characteristic features of the Classical style occur in

With respect to the remaining movements of the symphony, the

The sonata da camera and other types of suite, especially for

Even more directly related to the symphony is the little-known genre

The earliest known ripieno concertos are the six concerti a 4 in

A final important progenitor of the symphony is the Italian opera

It is also relevant to note that the overture in the period before

This conclusion is supported by the publication in 1729 of Andrea

With one or two possible exceptions, Sammartini’s approximately 20

The evolution in Sammartini’s symphonies during his early period

During approximately the period just discussed, an important new

The first movement of Leo’s overture to Lucio Papirio (1735, Naples)

The next generation of Italian symphonists included two fine

8. Dresden, Berlin and German Protestant

The pre-eminent Dresden court composer, J.A. Hasse (1699–1783),

The principal Dresden contribution to the early concert symphony

The 18 symphonies of C.P.E. Bach (1714–88) are divided fairly evenly

The fundamental enigma of that style results from a sometimes

In addition to Dresden and Berlin, numerous smaller courts of

At the ducal court of Mecklenburg-Schwerin to the north, two

In south-western Germany there were several other important

9. Mannheim and other German Catholic courts.

The sheer volume and wide distribution of the symphonies produced

As discussed above (§5), Johann Stamitz deserves the principal

The first generation of Mannheim symphonists included two figures

Richter’s symphonies written at Mannheim are the more

The second generation of Mannheim symphonists were all pupils of

Stamitz’s successor as leader of the Mannheim orchestra was

The modern editions of the symphonies of Cannabich’s co-

Several other composers often associated with the second

The numerous courts of Bavaria also proved fertile in their

Of the many other musically active courts in the region, two in

The early Viennese symphony reveals the potent influence of three

Interestingly, the 25 symphonies a 4 of one of the earliest Viennese

Wagenseil (1715–77), a prolific composer more in touch with the full

The second generation of Viennese symphonists begins with Karl von

The slightly older composer F.L. Gassmann (1729–74) made his

In other details of style Gassmann’s most striking talent is his

Apart from Haydn and Mozart, the highest achievements in the

Though only slightly younger than Gassmann and Ordonez, Hofmann

Dittersdorf (1739–99) was the most prolific symphonist of the second

Possibly because of his success in dramatic music, Dittersdorf began