What is a symphony?

[antongould]

what's a sonata ?

so I guess that excludes most of Haydn symphonies then ?

"A musical composition of 3 or 4 movements of contrasting forms"

[Flosshilde]

"A long and complex sonata for symphony orchestra"

So a symphony is something played by a symphony orchestra?

[ahinton]

"A musical composition of 3 or 4 movements of contrasting forms"

Ah, so Sibelius 7, Mahler 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 & 10 and who knows how many other major works so entitled simply dont count, then?!

I'd say that one answer to this question is "a work by Dmitry Shostakovich that doesn't bear a number that's one-third of a number made (in)famous by Douglas Adams".

[Roehre]

Perhaps most of think we know this, but how do we decide that a piece of music is a symphony?

I am afraid the only reason why we call a work a symphony (in the 20th C it even hasn't got to be an orchestral work, e.g. Ustvolskaya's symphonies) is because the composer called it a symphony.

A couple of examples.

Shortly after Milhaud started composing what would have been his Symphony no.13 (in commemmoration of the victims of War), he received a letter from his publisher begging him not to write any symphonies anymore, as it was a near impossibility to get these published without making a loss, as Milhaud was composing so many of them. Indeed Milhaud honoured this letter: he actually did not write any symphony any more. However, he then started to compose works titled "Music for.....", actually symphonies in all but name: the same 3 or 4 mvts, the same internal connections, etc. So his "no.13" became Ode pour les Morts des Guerres, "no.14" Music for Prague, "no.15" Music for Indiana, "no.16" Music for Lisbon, etc.

Mahler changed the title of the symphonic poem Titan after a revision to Symphony no.1.
Symphony no.4 was originally Humoreske for orchestra.
His Lied von der Erde is according to the title a Symphony. Unnumbered, but that has got to do with Mahler's superstition regardig Ninth symphonies.

What have many of the Langgaard symphonies to do with the form "symphony", or Brian's Gothic or Mahler's Eight, for that matter?

Schumann's 4 as well as Sibelius' 7 started life as "Symphonic phantasies"

Szymanowski' Symphony no.4 4 is called "Symphony concertante", but is actually a piano concerto, whereas Brahms' piano concerto no.1 actually is a symphony with piano solo.

What have the Lutoslawski symphonies in common, apart from their title and their composer?
The same applies grosso mode to Shostakovich's symphonies. Stricly speaking from the 15 only nos. 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10 and 15 more or less are shaped "classically", whereas nos .2 and 3 hardly have got anything to do with that same "classical" form.

Not only the 20th /21st C orchestral works called symphonies cause trouble:
we only have to look at Haydn's or Mozart's output to find nice borderline works.
Haydn's Symphony "A" (Hob.I:106) is in manuscript a Cassatio (or Divertimento), whereas Mozart's no.32 KV318 is called "Ouverture" by its composer, not to mention the symphonies of Mozart's which started life as opera-overtures (KV208 e.g.) or as Serenade or Divertimento (KV248/250 and 320, e.g.).

What's the difference between a Concert for Orchestra (like Bartok's or Petrassi's) and a symphony?
The season 1981 brochure of the Concertgebouw mentions a "Symphony no.2" by Tristan Keuris to be premiered by Haitink and the CGO. That premiere took place, but the work was called Movements for Orchestra. Who to blame? The artistic director of the Orchestra, who was told by the composer that it was a four mvt work and assumed it was a symphony without checking with the composer before the brochure went to the printer....

Just a couple of examples where the form "symphony" and the title "symphony" hardly have got any relationship to each other.

We depend fully on what the composer says it is.

[french frank]

1. The meaning varies, somewhat or significantly, depending on the era to which it applies.

2. There are three(?) principal stages: pre-classic/'sinfonia', classic, post-classic . The classic era starts approximately with Haydn, develops signfiicantly and tails off as the 20th c progresses; this is what most often people would be thinking of when they talk about a symphony.

3. In that sense: an integrated work of significant length and complexity, very often divided into (four) distinct movements and which often includes a range of recognised patterns (e.g. two faster outer movements enclosing two slower movements; a minuet/scherzo as third movement; standard sonata form; variations). Composed for a full orchestra of variable size but containing strings, woodwind, brass, timpani, percussion, with no intervening sustained passages, written or improvised, for solo instrument (hence sym-phony).

4. NB A definition doesn't mean there are no exceptions.

5. As a general linguistic point, for words/nouns to have a useful meaning they refer to things which fulfil basic category norms of the named object. Used otherwise they have a restricted use. Anarchic nomenclature is frequently a conceit, or fancy, which we are invited to accept, with or without good reason.

[mercia]

4. NB A definition doesn't mean there are no exceptions.

indeed, I'm sure we can all think of many exceptions to the definition in 3.
symphonies for solo instrument, symphonies of insignificant length, for strings only etc. etc.

[vinteuil]

5. As a general linguistic point, for words/nouns to have a useful meaning they refer to things which fulfil basic category norms of the named object. Used otherwise they have a restricted use. Anarchic nomenclature is frequently a conceit, or fancy, which we are invited to accept, with or without good reason.

I think French Frank is a Wittgensteinian :

" “For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language” (Philosophical Investigations 43). This basic statement is what underlies the change of perspective most typical of the later phase of Wittgenstein's thought: a change from a conception of meaning as representation to a view which looks to use as the hinge of the investigation. Traditional theories of meaning in the history of philosophy were intent on pointing to something exterior to the proposition which endows it with sense. This “something” could generally be located either in an objective space, or inside the mind as mental representation. As early as 1933 (The Blue Book) Wittgenstein took pains to challenge these dogmas, arriving at the insight that “if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say that it was its use” (BB 4). Ascertainment of the use (of a word, of a proposition), however, is not given to any sort of constructive theory building, as in the Tractatus. Rather, when investigating meaning, the philosopher must “look and see” the variety of uses to which the word is put. So different is this new perspective that Wittgenstein repeats: “Don't think but look!” (PI 66); and such looking is done vis à vis particular cases, not thoughtful generalizations. In giving the meaning of a word, any explanatory generalization should be replaced by a description of use. The traditional idea that a proposition houses a content and has a restricted number of Fregean forces (such as assertion, question and command), gives way to an emphasis on the diversity of uses." [Stanford Encycl: Philos: ]

[amateur51]

I think French Frank is a Wittgensteinian :

I was getting a touch of the Grews, vints until "Anarchic nomenclature is frequently a conceit, or fancy, which we are invited to accept, with or without good reason. " which I read as a potential dig at said member

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There you go, Dave: aren't you glad you asked!

[edashtav]

4. NB A definition doesn't mean there are no exceptions.

Or... to go one step further, there can be no exceptions.

Surely, Florent Schmitt put his punny finger on that point when he composed his Suite Sans Esprit De Suite. He felt, perhaps, that there were no connexions between his movements, that he'd put them randomly in a folder labelled "Suite" but, as has been pointed out, all the movements share the spirit of the dance. Florent called his work a suite so the definition of that set has to expand to encompass his work.

I'm busy writing my Symphony Without the Spirit of A Symphony .
Will I succeed - is it possible for me to fail?

[ahinton]

In the wake - and mindful - of the early success of Elgar's Symphony No. 3 (the incredibly clumsy "official" title of which I make no apologise for eschewing), I asked Anthony Payne when he would be writing his own First Symphony; he was in his mid-60s by then - an age at which most composers who might consider writing symphonies would probably have written at least one. "Never!", came the terse and unequivocal response, tinged - as I couldn't help but feel - with some sense of the unsaid punch-line "ask a silly question...".

Any meaningful survey of the possible answers to the question "when is a symphony not a symphony?" could, of course, fill volumes, at least one of which might well be devoted entirely to works that are symphonies but to which their composers chose to give other titles; Brahms's First Piano Concerto has already been mentioned as a case in point and, just taking works entitled "Concerto" as a starting point, one could perhaps as easily have cited Elgar's Violin Concerto (which has often struck me as his Symphony No. 1½) or indeded Stevenson's - and there must be hundreds more examples, not least the piano concertos of Busoni and Bush, ambitious works that each employ a chorus in their respective finales. Then there's the strange case of the teenage Korngold, whose Sinfonietta is on a scale not much smaller than Elgar's symphonies. Is Schönberg's First Chamber Symphony really a symphony - not only because it's in a single movement but because it is in effect a kind of concerto for 15 soloists? Well, Schönberg regarded it and titled it as such and felt no urge to change that title even after he had completed his second one which is scored for a more conventional small orchestra. The symphonies for solo instrument are quite a few in number, too - not only are there the relatively well known organ symphonies of Vierne, Widor, Tournemire and Karg-Elert but there are ten by Sorabji - three for organ and seven for piano - and, given the sheer scale of the three-movement Second Organ Symphony (completed in the early 1930s but not performed complete until 2010) - not far short of nine hours in toto - it might be said to merit its title as well as any other.

David Matthews - arguably one of Britain's finest living symphonists - once put to me a question not dissimilar to that which I'd earlier posed to Anthony Payne, only in the rather more forthright guise of "why haven't you written a symphony?" (almost as if to say that I should have done); the only answer that I could possible give was that I just cannot face up to using "that word", even though I may already have written a couple of works that might be thought to merit that title (one of which is actually dedicated to Matthews himself).

Charles Ives wrote four symphonies. He also almost wrote The Unanswerable Question. He'd therefore have understood the thrust of this issue better than most...

[MrGongGong]

Of course one other answer is (for me at least this year !)

Paying off my Tax bill and 2 weeks camping in France with my family

(which is what I spent most of the money from the one I recently wrote on)

[Beef Oven]

In the wake - and mindful - of the early success of Elgar's Symphony No. 3 (the incredibly clumsy "official" title of which I make no apologise for eschewing), I asked Anthony Payne when he would be writing his own First Symphony; he was in his mid-60s by then - an age at which most composers who might consider writing symphonies would probably have written at least one. "Never!", came the terse and unequivocal response, tinged - as I couldn't help but feel - with some sense of the unsaid punch-line "ask a silly question...".

Any meaningful survey of the possible answers to the question "when is a symphony not a symphony?" could, of course, fill volumes, at least one of which might well be devoted entirely to works that are symphonies but to which their composers chose to give other titles; Brahms's First Piano Concerto has already been mentioned as a case in point and, just taking works entitled "Concerto" as a starting point, one could perhaps as easily have cited Elgar's Violin Concerto (which has often struck me as his Symphony No. 1½) or indeded Stevenson's - and there must be hundreds more examples, not least the piano concertos of Busoni and Bush, ambitious works that each employ a chorus in their respective finales. Then there's the strange case of the teenage Korngold, whose Sinfonietta is on a scale not much smaller than Elgar's symphonies. Is Schönberg's First Chamber Symphony really a symphony - not only because it's in a single movement but because it is in effect a kind of concerto for 15 soloists? Well, Schönberg regarded it and titled it as such and felt no urge to change that title even after he had completed his second one which is scored for a more conventional small orchestra. The symphonies for solo instrument are quite a few in number, too - not only are there the relatively well known organ symphonies of Vierne, Widor, Tournemire and Karg-Elert but there are ten by Sorabji - three for organ and seven for piano - and, given the sheer scale of the three-movement Second Organ Symphony (completed in the early 1930s but not performed complete until 2010) - not far short of nine hours in toto - it might be said to merit its title as well as any other.

David Matthews - arguably one of Britain's finest living symphonists - once put to me a question not dissimilar to that which I'd earlier posed to Anthony Payne, only in the rather more forthright guise of "why haven't you written a symphony?" (almost as if to say that I should have done); the only answer that I could possible give was that I just cannot face up to using "that word", even though I may already have written a couple of works that might be thought to merit that title (one of which is actually dedicated to Matthews himself).

Charles Ives wrote four symphonies. He also almost wrote The Unanswerable Question. He'd therefore have understood the thrust of this issue better than most...

With dry-drivel like this, is it any wonder that we we can't attract a young(er) audience?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

David Matthews - arguably one of Britain's finest living symphonists - once put to me a question not dissimilar to that which I'd earlier posed to Anthony Payne, only in the rather more forthright guise of "why haven't you written a symphony?" (almost as if to say that I should have done); the only answer that I could possible give was that I just cannot face up to using "that word", even though I may already have written a couple of works that might be thought to merit that title (one of which is actually dedicated to Matthews himself).

Which begs the questions

"When is a non-symphony really a symphony"?

What is it about "that word" that makes it impossible for you to use it?

What is it about your works that "might be thought to merit that title" that makes you feel they "might"?

Apologies for being nosey, but I feel that there is the potential for an answer closer to the one I think Dave was hoping for in his OP.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

With dry-drivel like this, is it any wonder that we we can't attract a young(er) audience?

Rather a wet response, BeefO.

By the way, have you seen Dave's post # 1591 about Sinopoli on the "Bargains" Thread? I think it's a question you'd have fun answering.