Sinfonia en El Siglo 19 New Grove

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1993)
J. Spitzer: ‘Players and Parts in the 18th-Century Orchestra’, Basler
Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis, xvii (1993), 65–88
C. Eisen: Preface to Orchestral Music in Salzburg, 1750–1780,
RRMCE, xl (1994)
L. Finscher, B. Pelker and J. Reutter, eds.: Mozart und Mannheim:
Kongressbericht Mannheim 1991 (Frankfurt, 1994)
J.P. Larsen: ‘Zur Vorgeschichte der Symphonik der Wiener Klassik’,
ed. E. Badura-Skoda and N. Krabbe, SMw, xliii (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, vii/1–2]
For further bibliography see also articles on individual composers and

geographical centres
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II. 19th century

1. The essence of the genre.
2. Beethoven.
3. Beethoven’s contemporaries.
4. The crisis of the 1830s.
5. Germany and Austria, 1840–1900.
6. Other countries, 1840–1900.
7. Mixtures with other genres.
Symphony, §II: 19th century
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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; 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

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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.
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

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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
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

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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,
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

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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.
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

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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 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

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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

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intensity.
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

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which contrasting units create a coherent whole.

The historical impact of the Ninth Symphony is considered in §4, below.
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

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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’.
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

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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; 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

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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 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’,

Symphony
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.
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

Symphony
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 test is taken from the Magnificat.
Liszt’s followers, notably Joachim Raff and Felix Draeske, 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 ‘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

Symphony
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 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

Symphony
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.
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

Symphony
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

Symphony
symphonie of 1840 was followed almost 50 years later by the hugely

successful Symphony in D minor (1888), also belongs within this 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

Symphony
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 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);

Symphony
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’) and
Debussy’s La mer (1898), 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 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.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
H.C. Koch: ‘Symphonie’, Musikalisches Lexikon (Frankfurt, 1802/R)
J.-J. de Momigny: Cours complet d’harmonie et de composition
(Paris, 1803–6)
E.T.A. Hoffmann: ‘Review of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony’, AMZ, xii
(1809–10), 630–42, 652–9; Eng. trans. in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Musical
Writings, ed. D. Charlton (Cambridge, 1989)
E.L. Gerber: ‘Eine freundliche Vorstellung über gearbeitete
Instrumentalmusik, besonders über Symphonien’, AMZ, xv (1812–13),
457–63
E.T.A. Hoffmann: ‘Beethovens Instrumental-Musik’, Zeitung für die
Elegante Welt (Leipzig, 1813)
A.B. Marx: ‘Etwas über die Symphonie und Beethovens Leistungen in
diesem Fach’, Berliner allegemeine musikalische Zeitung, i (1824),
165–8, 173–6, 181–4
G.W. Fink: ‘Ueber die Symphonie’, AMZ, xxxvii (1834–5), 505–11,
521–4, 557–63
E. von Elterlein: Beethoven’s Symphonien nach ihrem idealen Gehalt,
mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Haydn, Mozart und die neueren
Symphoniker (Dresden, 1854, 3/1870)
H. Berlioz: A travers chants (Paris, 1862/R; Eng. trans., 1913–18); ed.
and Eng. trans. E. Csicsery-Rónay (Bloomington, IN, 1994)
S. Bagge: Die Symphonie in ihrer historischen Entwickelung (Leipzig,

Symphony
1884)
H. Kretzschmar: Führer durch den Konzertsaal, i (Leipzig, 1887,
rev.7/1932 by F. Noack and H. Botstiber)
F. Weingartner: Die Symphonie nach Beethoven (Leipzig, 1898,
4/1926/R; Eng. trans., 1904)
P. Bekker: Die Sinfonie von Beethoven bis Mahler (Berlin, 1918)
K. Nef: Geschichte der Sinfonie und Suite (Leipzig, 1921/R)
G.B. Shaw: Music in London 1890–94 (London, 1932), i, 18f
D.F. Tovey: Essays in Musical Analysis, i–ii (London, 1935–9/R,
abridged 2/1981)
G. Abraham: A Hundred Years of Music (London, 1938, 4/1974)
A. Carse: The Orchestra from Beethoven to Berlioz (Cambridge, 1948/
R)
K. Blaukopf, ed.: Lexikon der Symphonie (Teufen-St Gallen, 1952)
H. Pleasants, ed. and trans.: E. Hanslick: Music Criticisms 1846–99
(New York, rev. 2/1963)
R. Simpson, ed.: The Symphony, i: Haydn to Dvořák (Harmondsworth,
1966, 2/1972)
K. Pahlen: Symphonie der Welt (Zürich, 1967)
R. Simpson: The Essence of Bruckner (London, 1967, 3/1992)
J. Horton: Brahms Orchestral Music (London, 1969)
P.H. Lang: ‘The Symphony in the Nineteenth Century’, The Symphony
1800–1900 (New York, 1969)
H. Macdonald: Berlioz Orchestral Music (London, 1969)
J. Warrack: Tchaikovsky Symphonies and Concertos (London, 1969,
2/1974)
M.J.E. Brown: Schubert Symphonies (London, 1970)
R. Simpson: Beethoven Symphonies (London, 1970/R)
A. Salop: ‘Intensity and the Romantic Sonata Allegro’, Studies in the
History of Musical Style (Detroit, 1971), 251–92
C. Dahlhaus: ‘Studien zu romantischen Symphonien’, Jb des
Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung (1972), 104–19
U. von Rauchhaupt, ed.: Die Welt der Symphonie (Hamburg, 1972;
Eng. trans., 1972)
L. Cuyler: The Symphony (New York, 1973, 2/1995)
R. Kloiber: Handbuch der klassischen und romantischen Symphonie
(Wiesbaden, 2/1976)
P. Stedman: The Symphony (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979, 2/1992)
C. Dahlhaus: Die Musik des 19. Jahrhundert (Laaber, 1980; Eng.
trans., 1989)

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C. Dahlhaus: ‘E.T.A. Hoffmanns Beethoven-Kritik und die Ästhetik des

Erhabenen’, AMw, xxxix (1981), 80–92
C.-H. Mahling: Ueber Symphonien: Beiträge zu einer musikalischen
Gattung (Tutzing, 1979)
C. Dahlhaus: ‘Symphonie und symphonischer Stil um 1850’, Jb des
Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung (1983), 34–58
A. Newcomb: ‘Once More “Between Absolute and Program Music”:
Schumann’s Second Symphony’, 19CM, vii (1983–4), 233–50
D. Pistone: La symphonie dans l’Europe du XIXe siècle (Paris, 1984)
M. Fuchs: ‘So pocht das Schicksal an die Pforte’: Untersuchungen und
Vorschläge zur Rezeption sinfonischer Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts
(Munich, 1986)
U. Konrad: ‘Der Wiener Kompositionswettbewerb 1835 und Franz
Lachners Sinfonie passionata: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Sinfonie
nach Beethoven’, Augsburger Jb für Musikwissenschaft (1986), 209–
39
F. Wohlfahrt: Geschichte der Sinfonie (Hamburg, 1986)
S. Kross, ed.: Probleme der symphonischen Tradition im 19.
Jahrhundert (Tutzing, 1990)
S. Oechsle: Symphonik nach Beethoven: Studien zu Schubert,
Schumann, Mendelssohn und Gade (Kassel, 1992)
M. Geck: Von Beethoven vis Mahler: die Musik des deutschen
Idealismus (Stuttgart, 1993)
R. Layton, ed.: A Companion to the Symphony (London, 1993)
S. Pederson: ‘On the Task of the Music Historian: the Myth of the
German Symphony after Beethoven’, Repercussions, ii/2 (1993), 5–30
S. Pederson: ‘A.B. Marx, Berlin Concert Life, and German National
Identity’, 19CM, 18 (1994–5), 87–107
F.E. Kirby: ‘The Germanic Symphony of the Nineteenth Century:
Genre, Form, Instrumentation, Expression’, JMR, xiv (1995), 193–221
M.E. Bonds: After Beethoven: Imperatives of Originality in the
Symphony (Cambridge, MA, 1996)
D.K. Holoman, ed.: The Nineteenth-Century Symphony (New York,
1996)
R.P. Locke: ‘The French Symphony: David and Gounod to Bizet, Saint-
Saëns, Franck, and their Followers’, The Symphony: ca. 1826–1900,
ed. D.K. Holoman (New York, forthcoming)
Symphony
III. 20th century


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Symphony

For further bibliography see also articles on individual composers and

II. 19th century

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1. The essence of the genre.

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democratic, egalitarian society in which no single figure predominates and

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course of the century. Trombones, traditionally restricted to the realms of

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unprofitable for composers and publishers alike. Symphonies were difficult

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of Judgment (1790), Kant echoed the general sentiment of his time in

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which contrasting units create a coherent whole.

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generations of Bach and Handel (first movement), Haydn and Mozart

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Beethoven could be neither copied nor ignored.

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Roméo et Juliette (1839), reserves the crucial scenes of Shakespeare’s

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other form of instrumental music, was already perceived as an all-

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their extended harmonic language, massive orchestral forces, imposing

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inflections of popular music from his native Bohemia in his later

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symphonie of 1840 was followed almost 50 years later by the hugely

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composition and performance of such symphonies. The understanding of

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and even the symphonic poem (Liszt’s Faust-Symphonie). The ‘symphonic’

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C. Dahlhaus: ‘E.T.A. Hoffmanns Beethoven-Kritik und die Ästhetik des

III. 20th century

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