In other more generally oriented music discussion forums, a thread often arises that attempts to enumerate the "Great Symphonists" of the classical tradition. These discussion, however entertaining, tend to quickly turn into "Top 10" lists...

What I would like to discuss here is to attempt to trace the line of the main Symphonic tradition, as passed from composer to composer. Each composer certainly has unique contributions and approaches in writing symphonies, but that said, there is certainly common ground and a sense of tradition as well. What I will attempt to do here is trace a line of composers that "hold the line" but also advance the Symphony as an art form further.

The emphasis is on this thought: the symphony as defined by Beethoven (through examination of his music, not his words) is a major orchestral work that presents profound musical ideas and structures, with an emphasis on musical unity and coherence both within and across movements.

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Disclaimer - This is my personal definition and the chosen focus of this discussion.  I am not presenting this as THE definition of what a symphony is and should be.  I would simply like to discuss the line of composers that have adhered to these ideas.

Quite simply, here is my list of composers that I see as the core of the "Symphonists", those that have both maintained and advanced the tradition.

Mozart and Haydn - The fathers of the Symphony
Beethoven - The "Thrower of the Gauntlet"
Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Dvorak and Bruckner - Beethoven's successors
Sibelius - Beethoven's 20th Century exponent

And amazingly, that is all. I cannot think of other composers who devoted themselves to the main this main line of symphonic unity, albeit defined by me.

Yes, I have left out notables, namely Tchaikovsky, Berlioz and Mahler... I believe there music goes elsewhere, either to the expansive side or to the capricious side...

I hope my narrow and perhaps contreversial list and generalization will spur some discussion!

Has anyone read the book "Beethoven, Sibelius and the Profound Logic"?

Although this book takes a clearly analytic approach, it describes the line that exists between Beethoven and Sibelius.

If I understand this correctly, it is the discussion of composers who continued the progression of the symphony descending from the Mozart/Haydn tradition.
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I think the Brahms, Schumann, Bruckner line is valid. However, leaving in Dvorak opens up the influence of nationalism and then you have to let in Tchaikovsky. And if that's the case than we can open up Mahler and keep going.

I'm going to say that Dvorak lies in the "hold the line' category, but in the advance the tradition issue, I think his development of the symphony meant folk elements.

Unless we say that the 'tradition' is that the symphony, being Viennese, had those folk elements, therefore Dvorak used his own folk influences.

Just some thoughts.

The reason I include Dvorak "In the line" is that from the 7th symphony onwards, he was very concerned with motivic unity not only within movements but across movements as well. In the 9th Symphony, the various motives from earlier movements are used as not only accompaniment figures, but as structural signposts.

Tchaikovsky never even came close to this, unless you count "bringing in the big tune in a major key at the end" a hallmark of structural and thematic unity.

Can you believe I've never even heard of that book? I must get my hands on it, although that could be difficult in the CZ...

I think [of] Sibelius as the most logic and thought-out. He remains the one with the [most] skill.

Berlioz was seen as the first true heir of the Beethoven tradition. He saw himself that way, for that matter, not in any egotistical way, but simply as descriptive of his own aims, which were not the aims that get the most attention, even now.

It's that damned program for the Symphonie Fantastique that started all the trouble. And not so much the program as the fantasies it inspired! Berlioz' music is still difficult to hear; apparently it can still only be heard through the mist of all the distortions about his life and his artistic aims. For no other composer until Schoenberg (whose twelve tone works are so utterly charming and delightful and enjoyable... who have you ever heard say THAT before?) do such distortions color the listening experience so deeply and disturbingly.

What characterizes Berlioz' symphonies, indeed what characterizes all his music, is logic. Very logical, well-thought out musical ideas. For my part, I can't think of any other composer of the nineteenth century who so completely and systematically carried out and extended Beethoven's symphonic ideas.

I'm guessing that Kurkikohtaus was thinking of Berlioz when he threw in the word "capricious." It's a common error about Berlioz, but not one that can stand up to careful and thoughtful listening. My guess may be wrong, at least about Kurkikohtaus' attribution. Certainly his definition of a symphony as

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a major orchestral work that presents profound musical ideas and structures, with an emphasis on musical unity and coherence both within and across movements

describes Berlioz' work better than it does any of the people on the successor list.

I esteem all these people very highly, but if we're going by Kurkikohtaus' definition, and I see no reason not to, then no one fits the description as completely and accurately as Berlioz.

some guy wrote:

I'm guessing that Kurkikohtaus was thinking of Berlioz when he threw in the word "capricious."

Actually, I was referring to Tchaikovsky with the word capricious. I to like Tchaikovsky's symphonies, especially the Pathetique, but I find them to be an exposition of Tchaikovsky's flow of consciousness as it relates to his emotional state... not necessarily exponents of our beloved Profound Logic.

As for Berlioz, I admit that the Symphonie Fantastique is the only piece by him that I know well. I find his use of the idee fixe very imaginative, I find the music very expressive... but in terms of him being a successor to Beethoven...

I feel he may be Beethoven's successor in terms of the expressiveness and emotional impact of the music, but not in terms of structural organisation, both abstract and harmonic. In those terms, I find him to be a predecessor of Liszt and Wagner, in the best sense.

Tchaikovsky. Of course. That makes much more sense, yes.

And though you admit to not knowing much Berlioz, I must say that you seem to listen to a lot of music for a conductor. (That's not a criticism, as you probably know, just an acknowledgment of a hazard of the job: after a long day of studying scores and rehearsing ensembles, very few people are going to go home and unwind with more music!! Of all the conductors I've known, you're in that "very few" category.)

Anyway, the Romeo and Juliet symphony is the best place to see and hear how Berlioz adapted and elaborated the expressive and structural ideas of Beethoven. The more one listens to Berlioz, the more one is struck with the tightness and sophistication of the organization. The surface sounds are so strange and arresting--still, after all these years--that the underlying logic only reveals itself after repeated listenings. Careful listenings, of course! When you start thinking that Berlioz was as much an arch-classicist as he was an arch-romantic, then you know you've got the measure of this composer.

I will take your word for it and make a point to listen to the Romeo and Juliet Symphony. Honestly, I have never actually heard of that piece...

Just checked my catalogue... is the Queen Mab Scherzo taken from the symphony? I've heard that, at least.

Seems the symphony is gigantic:

3224 - 4431 - 2T+4 - 2Hp - Strings - Chorus - solos ATB

... with a total playing time of 95 minutes. If this piece at this length and scope is truly as tightly organized as you say, then I am looking forward to hearing it.

To quote Jean Sibelius himself, 'After Beethoven, all so called symphonies with the exception of Brahms have been Symphonic poems'. When Sibelius turned away from German and Russian romanticism towards what he called 'pure cold water' he did so out of a realization that Wagner, for all his reverence of the great masters of the past, had distracted musicians from the greatest achievements of the classical masters--organic growth, cogent argument and that athletic and comulative energy, so characteristic of the golden age of symphonic music.

With the emotional excesses of Mahler and Strauss hastening the final death rattle of the late romantic era, Sibelius ressurected the symphony for the new century. He is the true post Beethoven symphonist.
The fourth symphony of Sibelius as well as pointing to the future, goes right back to the late quartets of Beethoven and it is this world that we must penetrate if we are to come to terms with Sibelius's symphonic development.

My symphonic thread would be : Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms and Sibelius. I must add that though I love and admire Dvorak, I cannot place him in this list of the key symphonists.--kullervopete.

kullervopete wrote:

I must add that though I love and admire Dvorak, I cannot place him in this list of the key symphonists.

I can respect this opinion, as I am well aware that my inclusion of Dvořák here is based entirely upon my nationality and my constant exposure to his music, both as listener and performer.

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I often think of the main symphonic as being Mozart & Haydn, then Beethoven... and then the major aspects of Beethoven's symphonies were kind of expounded upon by various others. Brahms took a more serious and monumental look at the symphony, Schubert the more poetic, The Liszt Faction took off from Beethoven's sixth, Mahler the enormity of forces used (as seen in Beethoven's ninth), Sibelius the thematic development. I've not listened so much to Dvorak's symphonies, but the little I've heard is quite dramatic... I just can't quite think of him as a real major part of the symphonic line. He never really found a unique symphonic voice until late in his career (the seventh or eighth symphonies, wasn't it?).

But yes, Sibelius is definitely a major part of the main symphonic line, if not the final link. He just brought so much new stuff to the realm of music in general... Not in the way of Schoenberg, though.

I like this thread, thanks to World Violist for waking it up and giving me a platform for my big #500!

I am currently immersed in Beethoven's 9th Symphony, we are performing it on March 21st, a joint venture with the University of Nürnberg choir. I have always had a great respect for this piece, during University I did an in-depth structural analysis of the last movement, showing how it is a masterful combination of Variation, Sonata and Fugal form. Some interesting points about this combintion of techniques:

• While this work casts the idea of the "Big Finale" across the entire 19th Century and beyond, no other symphony (to my knowledge) combines Sonata, Variations and Fugue in this way and to this extent.
  
• The Variations define the Sonata. A subtle point, but it would have been much "easier" for a composer to achieve the Sonata/Variations combination the other way around, by "artificially" erecting a Sonata structure and then plopping Variations into it. But Beethoven proceeds with a very natural-feeling Variation technique, that somehow magically ends up outlining a Sonata.
  
• The fugual element is not just the raucuous double fugue in the development (after the Turkish march). Rather, the entire exposition of the main theme is conceived as a fugato, the Variations being defined by added voices in counterpoint.
  
• The final combination of the Freude theme and the Seid umschlungen theme at the end of the Recapitulation to bring the Sonata and Variations to a close is in my mind one of the crowning achievements of Symphonic unity ever.

All of this said, I find that the final influence of this movement on The Symphony shows itself only in the effect of the aforementioned "Big Finale", as not many composers dared to devote their strength to (and wrestle with) such a monumental combination of forms.

But what an influence the first 3 movements are!

If Beethoven had left this symphony incomplete, without the Finale, I think that the weight of the language in those 3 movements alone would have been enough to launch the Symphonic careers of Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler. (The second theme of the 3rd movement (in 3/4) always strikes me as particularily Mahleresque, without the hysteria and modulations)

And this brings me around full circle to Sibelius. While the underlying concept of unity that is prevalent in Sibelius' symphonies is certainly akin to the same concept in Beethoven's 9th, I don't sense any real influence or connection between the 9th and Sibelius' works. Perhaps there is some similarity between the Scherzo of the 9th and Sibelius' scherzo in his 1st... but that is a superficial thing and a link that dozens of Scherzi could claim. So can anyone else shed some light on this? Does anyone feel a link between Beethoven's 9th and Sibelius, one that I may have overlooked?

I think myself that the link from Beethovens Ninth can be followed through Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet, too Mahler.
Beethovens Fifth through Schumann's D minor, too Sibelius.--kullervopete.

Well, to me it seems that in some of Beethoven's sonata-form pieces, he writes some small little thing that couldn't possibly stand on its own and yet in the development he devotes an entire section to it? Or am I just being delusional? He would take something like, say, a rhythm or some little interval, and then go and make it the center of the whole piece.

What I'm getting at is that Sibelius does do that... just in his own unique way. He takes little cells of music or small pieces of the accompaniment and gently, inconspicuously, he brings them into the foreground. Just my take on this idea of Beethoven's development not being connected to Sibelius.

Indeed World Violist, this is the practice that Beethoven initiated and in a sense perfected. He showed composers (and the world) that you don't need a big tune, or in some cases a tune at all, to write riveting symphonic music.

Identifiable rhythmic motives provide the "material" of the music and a masterful command of harmonic tension provides the emotional content.

Yes indeed, this is of course the antithesis of Tchaikovsky's symphonic world and it is significant that the Russian masters early influence began to fade as Sibelius continued along his own path of discovery. There can be little doubt that Beethoven became increasingly important to Sibelius from the first Symphony on.
If as I have suggested earlier, Beethoven's Fifth is in a direct line to Sibbs later Symphonies, I would also cite the late quartets.
The composer Benjamin Frankel put it this way : 'This universe of infinate horizons is the one we have to contemplate if we are to come to terms with the peculiarities of Sibelius's maturer musical thought'.--kullervopete.