ÐÏࡱá>þÿ þÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿì¥Á#` ø¿òžbjbjm¥m¥ 1¨ÏÏ0¥ÿÿÿÿÿÿ¤,,,,,,,@è¡è¡è¡8 ¢ ,¤L@Wæî„¥ ¤°(Ì°Ì°Ì°§±˜?ºt³¼<ÒãÔãÔãÔãÔãÔãÔã$Eèh­êbøã,ÕΧ±§±ÕÎÕÎøã,,Ì°Ì°ÛægÝgÝgÝÕÎb,Ì°,Ì°ÒãgÝÕÎÒãgÝgÝòàÌ,,òáÌ°x¥ `Ðп"¢Èè¡7Ôà¾áÒã'æ0WæØáë×\ë4òáë,òáàｨ—à gÝ¡Ç<ÝÊøï½ï½ï½øãøãsÜôï½ï½ï½WæÕÎÕÎÕÎÕÎ@@@Ć¡ä@@@¡@@ÿÿÿÿ,,,,,,ÿÿÿÿ Last update 6 Apr 2008 INTRODUCTION Ever since my childhood, I've been fascinated by music. What exactly is it about this highly organised sound that can appear totally artificial and at the same time, so natural? What is this language without words that can convey so many emotions and be understood by almost everyone? Why are there 8 notes in an octave, or 12 if you count the semitones? Why do we have tones and semitones at all? Where do major and minor scales come from, and why do minor keys sound "sad"? Now, at the age of 50 I understand the science and theory behind music (and have even written large scale works of my own), but I am still at a loss to understand why music almost sounds like a living, breathing entity at times. So this is my attempt to explain music (in my own terms), and explore some of the musical masterpieces that have made the biggest impression on me. I don't think I ever heard any "classical" music at all until I was about 16. Until then, all I ever heard were 3 minute pop songs and the like, usually from the radio BBC "light programme" as it was then called - later renamed Radio 2. At primary (catholic) school we had regular hymn singing, but the hymns were so abysmally dreary it was a struggle to keep awake. (Why are most catholic hymns so dreary? I’ve never worked that one out. Surely anyone wanting to write music praising God would want it to be lively and joyous? But not the stuff we were made to chant monotonously, anyway.) At home, my parents sometimes listened to a small collection of LP's, but not very often, and always the same ones; I distinctly remember Guy Mitchell's greatest hits, Nat King Cole's various over-romantic ballads, songs from South Pacific and such like. On the radio, I occasionally heard hits by the Beatles and other bands around at the time, and preferred these to my parents' small collection of well-worn LPs. But even the best offerings of the Beatles (lively and infectious though they were, unlike any hymn ever written) still left me ultimately unfulfilled. There seemed to be nothing anywhere that lasted longer than 3 minutes. If I did hear anything played by an orchestra, it was probably backing music to a film on T.V. or the saccharine tones of Mantovani that meant nothing to me. (Much later in life I discovered that Mantovani actually lived for a time in my home town of Northfield, Birmingham. I was not impressed. However I cheered up when I also discovered that Tolkein’s birthplace was just down the road too!) During the 60’s my grandparents owned a "pianola" or player piano that my sister and I would take turns to play on whenever we visited them. Naturally, I would invariably pick out the largest piano rolls in the box to give me a longer turn, which gave me my first exposure to such classics as Strauss's Tales from the Vienna Woods and Suppé's Poet & Peasant overture - but played on piano, not an orchestra. Interesting as these pieces were, I nothing to attch them to; I had no idea of the existence of the whole classical genre of music. I had an itching feeling that there must be more than what I heard, but no way to find out. School music lessons were not really much help, although I do recall hearing Benjamin Britten's Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra and having the different sections of the orchestra explained to me, also Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf which slightly intrigued me with its various instruments playing the part of different animals. I was about 14 by then, and my ears were beginning to get impatient. Then, one day in 1973 when I was in the middle of my 'O' levels, I had a day off from school as there were no exams that day, and for the first time ever I was alone in the house. I was bored, and set about looking for something to do. I opened the old familiar record cabinet, and looked through the various LPs I had heard so often, and considered playing one. I pulled a few out - and noticed that there were some that I hadn't seen before, plus some older and different type discs hidden at the back of the cabinet. The labels of these stated “Speed 78 RPM” and looking at the turntable I noticed that I could adjust its speed to play them. What a surprise - music that had been hidden away from me all these years, and just asking to be played! I looked through the unfamiliar sleeves and saw names like Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Brahms, Beethoven - names I had only heard of from books, or dry music lessons at school. On the labels I saw the same names, plus dozens of others; Handel, Strauss, Grieg, even some really exotic names like Gounod, Reznicek, Meyerbeer, Ippolitov-Ivanov (which for years I thought were two people, like another one I found with the names "Rossini-Respighi" which actually was two people!) I wish I could remember the date I found these records, as it marked my rite of passage into the world of Real Music - and I haven't looked back since. I had been living on gruel for 16 years, and had suddenly discovered a vast banquet! I gorged myself on these records at every available opportunity after that miraculous initiation; I drove my parents (and undoubtedly my neighbours) mad with constant requests to hear my wonderful discoveries; I wore the record player out and had to save up and buy myself a cheap stereo player with the money I received from my first job. I was hooked - a classical music junkie at the tender age of 16, I just couldn't hear enough. Why, oh why hadn't I heard any of this before, if it was all in the house all along? So what were these wonderful pieces I had stumbled upon? Even now, 35 years on, a great deal of these pieces can evoke memories of that old record cabinet and those scratchy 78's - and no wonder, as they are still amongst the finest masterpieces ever written. Consider some of these for starters: On LP I found such gems as: Beethoven's Eroica symphony (the Sergeant Pepper of 1804, and still an awesome work.) Schubert's Unfinished symphony (magnificent melancholy) Mendelssohn's Hebrides overture (which I still regard as the pinnacle of musical perfection) Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and Romeo & Juliet fantasy (complete with clashing sabres and cannons!) Ibert's Divertissement and Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals on the same disc Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol and Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italien Schumann's Manfred overture and Brahms' Academic Festival overture Bizet’s charming 1st symphony, written when he was just 16. I was impressed. I was only 16 then too. On the old crackly 78's I found (amongst others): Grieg's sublime Piano Concerto Tchaikovsky's romantic 5th symphony (the complete set of about 6 78's) Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano concerto (only the beginning of the 1st movement and the last movement - that was the problem with 78's, large scale works would take up several discs, and most people only bought the sections they liked, which meant for years I didn't know how the 1st movement of this piece developed!) Beethoven’s 5th symphony (but only the 1st movement, for the same reason.) Rossini's La Boutique Fantasque (complete on about 4 discs I think) Sibelius's Finlandia overture Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre (Which I absolutely loved, and completely wore the record out!) Strangely, in the entire collection there was nothing by either Bach or Mozart. I discovered these composers later when I started buying my own records, and also when I started raiding my friends' parents' collections for more classics. My best friend Peter helped a great deal here, or at least his mother did, kindly letting me borrow almost her entire collection that consisted of such musical wonders as: Chopin's 1st piano concerto, and Saint-Saens' 2nd (with its marvellously scatty second movement) Berlioz s Symphonie Fantastique (with its startling depiction of a Witches Sabbath!) DvoYák's New World symphony (some of which I knew from those old "Hovis" adverts) Mozart's 36th, 39th, 40th & 41st symphonies (Mozart has never been one of my top 10 composers, even though I quite like these four symphonies. I seem to have a blind spot when it comes to Mozart, I find his music adequate for its time, but he is certainly not the great Musical Genius that he is made out to be, even by musicologists. Haydn, however...) Haydn's 39th and 73rd symphonies (still amongst my favourites even though they are not well-known Haydn works) Brahms' 1st symphony and 2nd Piano concerto (which I immediately fell in love with) Stravinsky's Firebird suite and Petruchka, which amazed me with its sumptuous cacophony of interlaced carnival sounds Bartok's 2nd Piano Concerto, which shocked and intrigued me and Mahler's 1st symphony, which totally knocked me out. I remember reading the sleeve notes on the back, and on learning that he had written a total of 9 symphonies, thinking "If this is only his first, and he was only in his 20's when he wrote it, what on earth do the later ones sound like?!" Of course, I eventually found out, and the wait was worth it. From another school friend (Anthony Taylor – thanks Tony!) I managed to borrow an LP of Beethoven’s 5th complete, as well as his evocative Pastoral symphony. I also quickly unearthed recordings of most of the rest of Beethoven’s symphonies from Peter (all apart from the 4th and 8th, actually.) Note that ALL of these pieces are totally different from each other – every one of them has a unique musical identity stamped on them by the composer. This was what I found so fascinating, that music could be so variable, so individualistic, so passionate, so alive. You can keep your South Pacific, thanks, and that whole collection of comatose hymns can be cast into the flames for all I care (yes, even the ones written by composers such as Vaughan Williams! What was he thinking?) This is my (our) musical heritage, and after nearly 40 years I’m still grabbing it with both hands and consuming it with both ears. So, after devouring this awesome pile of musical exotica, at the age of 16 going on 17 my head was filling up with music, and great music at that. It seems I was a dry sponge, just waiting for music like this to soak up, and soak it up I did. But there always seems to be more room, and I am still discovering new things. However, back in 1974, the volume and diversity of the music I had discovered just made me eager to hear more, and also to tell others about the treasures I had found. This was a bit tricky, as the flavour of the month at the time was the relatively lowbrow offerings of the Bay City Rollers and Slade etc. I felt I was shouting into the wind. The kind of reaction I typically received was along the lines of "Classical music's for old people, what are you doing listening to that boring stuff? Cum on, feel the noize!" Aaargh! If only they knew. I had discovered all these new forms that music could take - the symphony, the concerto, the overture, variations on a theme, ballet music, chamber music, etc. Then there were the discrete differences in styles from different periods in history - the baroque, the classical, the romantic, the post-romantic - apparently I wasn't listening to much "classical" music at all (which is why I always put that term in quotes) - the last Classical era composer was Beethoven, who was also the first Romantic era composer. I started to notice that after Beethoven, composers were more and more putting their own stamp on their music. It was easy to differentiate between Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky, and neither of them could be mistaken for Stravinsky, even by a listener who was tone-deaf. I remember listening to his Petruchka ballet music, and thinking, "This is all the work of one man, and it's incredible. He's using the same orchestra, more or less, as any other composer, but he gets completely different sounds out of it. And it all came out of his head. Just one person can do all this. Incredible!" So, my purpose of this book is to try and pass on my enthusiasm to others; to demonstrate that "classical" music - for want of a better description - is not just for old fogeys or highbrow intellectuals. Music is for everyone, and that goes for all music. (The composer Schnittke famously said “I love ALL of music!”) There should be no boundaries to music, nothing off-limits, nothing "out of fashion" or out of bounds. I don't want either to write a textbook on music theory, that's been done many times before by people much more knowledgeable than me in these matters. Besides, music can easily be over-analysed - if you start poring over the crotchets and quavers, scrutinising the mixolydian modes and the twelve-tone-rows, the music itself slips right through your fingers and disappears, and all you're left with is dry theory. This in my opinion has been the downfall of a great deal of mid to late C20th composers who tended to concentrate too much on the theory and forgot they were, after all, only writing music - meant to be appreciated by ordinary people who may not be able to follow over-complex musical arguments. No - I want to explore my favourite music in terms of its emotional impact; how a certain piece affected me the first time I heard it, what was going through the composer's mind when he wrote it, what was perhaps going on in his life (because this is quite often relevant.) Not that you need to know this to appreciate good music, but it does help to fill out the picture a bit, and a little understanding of the composer's thoughts can yield a great deal of insight into the music itself. So I intend to keep the musical theory to an absolute minimum, and concentrate on my personal thoughts and feelings. Rest assured - I certainly won’t be mentioning mixolydian modes again – at least not in this section! One other point I want to make here, and that concerns language. I am English; I speak English. English is the standard International Language, and the language of the Internet. Classical music however has been plagued with a polyglot mix of languages since the year dot, and is, I submit, partly responsible for its unpopularity. For example, why do we usually refer to Dukas’s masterpiece The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in English when it is actually a French piece (L’Apprenti Sourcier), yet other pieces are almost never referred to in English (Symphonie Fantastique is almost never called The Fantastic Symphony by English speaking people. Why not? That’s what it is.) Why, when discussing Mozart’s operas, do we blithely trot out The Marriage of Figaro in English, but when it comes to Die Entführung aus dem Serail (a title which means nothing to me), it is almost never referred to as The Abduction from the Seraglio, which makes slightly more sense. Or Cosi fan tutte – wouldn’t it sound better as All women are like that? I put it down to snobbery, which does music a great deal of harm in the long run. Some titles are truly polyglot, for example Rimsky-Korsakoff’s Capriccio Espagnol – one word French, the other Spanish - and written by a Russian! Why not call it Spanish Caprice – then we all know what it is. So for the sake of this essay, since it is written in English I will use mainly English versions of pieces, with the composer’s preferred title in parentheses where necessary. Sorry if this smacks of xenophobia; it isn’t meant to, I just want to provide some sort of consistency of language which the world of Classical Music drastically needs. CONTENTS  TOC \o "1-3" \h \z  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377825" INTRODUCTION  PAGEREF _Toc196377825 \h 1  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377826" SO WHO WROTE THE FIRST SYMPHONY?  PAGEREF _Toc196377826 \h 9  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377827" THE 18TH CENTURY SYMPHONY - THE CLASSICAL PERIOD  PAGEREF _Toc196377827 \h 10  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377828" Haydn’s Best Symphonies:  PAGEREF _Toc196377828 \h 11  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377829" Mozart’s Best Symphonies:  PAGEREF _Toc196377829 \h 12  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377830" THE 19TH CENTURY SYMPHONY  PAGEREF _Toc196377830 \h 13  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377831" THE EARLY ROMANTIC PERIOD – BERLIOZ & MENDELSSOHN  PAGEREF _Toc196377831 \h 16  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377832" THE MID-ROMANTIC PERIOD  LISZT, DVOXÁK, TCHAIKOVSKY, BRAHMS  PAGEREF _Toc196377832 \h 19  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377833" THE LATE ROMANTICS  BRUCKNER, MAHLER, RACHMANINOV  PAGEREF _Toc196377833 \h 26  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377834" THE 20TH CENTURY SYMPHONY  PAGEREF _Toc196377834 \h 33  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377835" UNFINISHED & RECONSTRUCTED SYMPHONIES  PAGEREF _Toc196377835 \h 35  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377836" SYMPHONIES IN ALL BUT NAME  PAGEREF _Toc196377836 \h 36  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377837" 2. THE CONCERTO  PAGEREF _Toc196377837 \h 37  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377838" 3. ORCHESTRAL MUSIC – SUITES, OVERTURES ETC.  PAGEREF _Toc196377838 \h 37  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377839" 4. CHAMBER MUSIC  PAGEREF _Toc196377839 \h 37  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377840" 5. BALLET MUSIC  PAGEREF _Toc196377840 \h 37  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377841" 6. SOLO INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC  PAGEREF _Toc196377841 \h 37  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377842" 7. ANYTHING ELSE I’VE MISSED? (NOT COUNTING OPERA)  PAGEREF _Toc196377842 \h 37  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377843" These sections to be completed later8. DETAILED ANALYSES OF MY FAVOURITE PIECES  PAGEREF _Toc196377843 \h 37  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377844" 8. DETAILED ANALYSES OF MY FAVOURITE PIECES  PAGEREF _Toc196377844 \h 38  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377845" HAYDN, FRANZ JOSEPH (1732-1809)  PAGEREF _Toc196377845 \h 38  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377846" Symphony no.39 in g minor (1770)  PAGEREF _Toc196377846 \h 38  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377847" Symphony no.44 in e minor “Mourning” (“Trauer”) (1772)  PAGEREF _Toc196377847 \h 38  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377848" Symphony no.45 in f# minor “Farewell” (1772)  PAGEREF _Toc196377848 \h 39  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377849" Symphony no.73 in D “La Chasse” (1783)  PAGEREF _Toc196377849 \h 39  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377850" Symphony no.94 in G “Surprise” (1791)  PAGEREF _Toc196377850 \h 39  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377851" Symphony no.101 in D “The Clock” (1794)  PAGEREF _Toc196377851 \h 40  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377852" WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)  PAGEREF _Toc196377852 \h 41  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377853" Symphony no.36 in C, k425 “Linz” (1783)  PAGEREF _Toc196377853 \h 41  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377854" Symphony no.37 – what’s the deal with this then?  PAGEREF _Toc196377854 \h 41  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377855" Symphony no.38 in D, k504 “Prague” (1786)  PAGEREF _Toc196377855 \h 41  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377856" BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VAN (1770-1827)  PAGEREF _Toc196377856 \h 43  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377857" Symphony no.1 in C major op.21 (1800)  PAGEREF _Toc196377857 \h 43  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377858" Symphony no.2 in D major op.36 (1802)  PAGEREF _Toc196377858 \h 43  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377859" Symphony no.3 in Eb major op.55 “Eroica” (1804)  PAGEREF _Toc196377859 \h 43  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377860" Symphony no.5 in C minor op.67 “Fate” (1806)  PAGEREF _Toc196377860 \h 45  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377861" Symphony no.6 in F major op.68 “Pastoral” (1808)  PAGEREF _Toc196377861 \h 45  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377862" Symphony no.7 in A major op.92 (1812)  PAGEREF _Toc196377862 \h 46  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377863" Symphony no.9 in D minor op.125 “Choral” (1824)  PAGEREF _Toc196377863 \h 47  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377864" SCHUBERT, FRANZ (1797-1828)  PAGEREF _Toc196377864 \h 49  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377865" Symphony no.8 in b minor op.125 “Unfinished” (1822)  PAGEREF _Toc196377865 \h 49  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377866" FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY (1809-1847)  PAGEREF _Toc196377866 \h 50  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377867" Symphony no.1 in C (1824)  PAGEREF _Toc196377867 \h 50  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377868" SCHUMANN, ROBERT (1810-1856)  PAGEREF _Toc196377868 \h 51  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377869" Symphony no.1 in B op.38 “Spring” (1841)  PAGEREF _Toc196377869 \h 51  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377870" BIZET, GEORGES (1838-1875)  PAGEREF _Toc196377870 \h 51  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377871" Symphony no.1 in C (1855)  PAGEREF _Toc196377871 \h 51  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377872" TCHAIKOVSKY, PYTOR ILYCH (1840-1897), Russian  PAGEREF _Toc196377872 \h 53  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377873" Symphony no.1 In G "Winter Dreams" op.13 (1874)  PAGEREF _Toc196377873 \h 53  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377874" Symphony no.2 In G "Little Russian" op.17 (1872)  PAGEREF _Toc196377874 \h 53  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377875" MAHLER, GUSTAV (1860-1911), Austrian  PAGEREF _Toc196377875 \h 55  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377876" MAHLER, GUSTAV (1860-1911), Austrian  PAGEREF _Toc196377876 \h 55  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377877" Symphony no.1 in d minor “Titan” (1888)  PAGEREF _Toc196377877 \h 55  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377878" Symphony no.2 in c minor ‘Resurrection’ (1898)  PAGEREF _Toc196377878 \h 56  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377879" Symphony no.5 (1902)  PAGEREF _Toc196377879 \h 59  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377880" IVES, CHARLES EDWARD (1874-1954), American  PAGEREF _Toc196377880 \h 60  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377881" Symphony no.2 (1902)  PAGEREF _Toc196377881 \h 60  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377882" SIBELIUS, JEAN JOHANN JULIUS (1865-1957), Finnish  PAGEREF _Toc196377882 \h 61  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377883" Symphony no.1 in e minor, op.39 (1899)  PAGEREF _Toc196377883 \h 61  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377884" Symphony no.2 in D, op.43 (1902)  PAGEREF _Toc196377884 \h 61  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377885" 9. MY FAVOURITE COMPOSERS  PAGEREF _Toc196377885 \h 63  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377886" BACH, JOHANN SEBASTIAN (1685-1750), German  PAGEREF _Toc196377886 \h 63  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377887" HAYDN, FRANZ JOSEPH (1732-1809), Austrian  PAGEREF _Toc196377887 \h 63  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377888" BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VAN (1770-1827), German  PAGEREF _Toc196377888 \h 63  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377889" MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY, FELIX (1809-1847), German  PAGEREF _Toc196377889 \h 64  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377890" BRAHMS, JOHANNES (1833-1897), German  PAGEREF _Toc196377890 \h 64  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377891" TCHAIKOVSKY, PYTOR ILYCH (1840-1897), Russian  PAGEREF _Toc196377891 \h 64  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377892" MAHLER, GUSTAV (1860-1911), Austrian  PAGEREF _Toc196377892 \h 64  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377893" SIBELIUS, JEAN JOHANN JULIUS (1865-1957), Finnish  PAGEREF _Toc196377893 \h 65  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377894" 10. COMPOSERS NAMES AS ADJECTIVES  PAGEREF _Toc196377894 \h 66  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377895" 11. GLOSSARY  PAGEREF _Toc196377895 \h 67  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377896" 12. REFERENCES & CREDITS  PAGEREF _Toc196377896 \h 68  HYPERLINK \l "_Toc196377897" Additional notes and criticisms kindly supplied by Joshua B. Lily  PAGEREF _Toc196377897 \h 68  Note: I am not writing this book linearly; I am skipping around it adding bits here and there as I think of them, so if you think you’ve already read a chapter, it may have changed since you last saw it! 1. THE SYMPHONY Put yourself in my position in 1973 - I'm sixteen, I know nothing - and I mean nothing about classical music. In 1973 in England everybody’s talking about Slade, T. Rex, Paper Lace (“Billy don’t be a Hero”), and The Wombles. (Not that there’s anything wrong with The Wombles; Mike Batt wrote some excellent music for them!) Anyway, I find a mono recording of Beethoven's 3rd symphony (The Heroic or Eroica if you insist, which every schoolboy knows as the “Erotica”) and put it on the turntable. I have heard of Beethoven, but apart from the opening bars of the famous 5th da-da-da-dum, I know nothing of the man or his music. At the start of my lifetime-long journey into music I have inadvertently stumbled on possibly the greatest classical symphony ever written, bar none. It starts with two loud stabs to grab your attention; Bam! Bam! If you have a recording of this musical epic, please put it on now. Imagine you've never heard it before. Imagine you've never heard anything classical before. (If you haven't, then you shouldn't have to stretch your imagination too hard! But all the same, try to forget about the sort of music you usually listen to as well.) You will be almost in the same state of mind as the first audience to hear this piece in 1804. I imagine they all sat with their mouths open, thinking, "What on earth is this?" It's music, but it doesn't just trot along merrily like something by Mozart or Haydn - it roars! It cries! It stamps its feet and shouts! It demands to be heard - you can't ignore it; it's like a petulant child wanting his favourite toy and doing everything he can to get your attention. Not that it's constantly loud, it dies away, then comes back at you again, more urgent than ever. It changes its mood every minute or so, with the result that you're never sure what's going to happen next. But everything that does happen sounds logical and inevitable, after you've heard it. All this was Beethoven's intention, of course. He knew exactly what he was doing, and never puts a foot wrong - at least not intentionally. According to the critics of the time though, he did make quite a few mistakes, but to young Ludwig they weren't mistakes at all. I'll point these "mistakes" out later. Suffice to say that even at this early stage of his career, Beethoven was happy to bend the rules considerably and annoy everyone around him who thought they know what good music was all about. Beethoven was 33 at the time he wrote this - and had already written a considerable amount of music, but this symphony marked a turning point, not only in his writing style, but also in the style of ALL music, amazing as that may sound. When Haydn (Beethoven's music teacher) heard it, he said that "From today, music will never be the same again" - and he was right. The pupil had become the master. And this was more or less the first symphony I ever heard in my life. I couldn't have had a better introduction. So, let's take a closer look at this musical form called the "symphony". What exactly is a symphony, anyway? How do you define a symphony? How do you write one? Which composers were the best symphonists, and why? Do composers still write symphonies? If so, who? OK, here’s what I’ve learned over the years. The symphony is sometimes said to be artistically the highest form of music - but that's not necessarily true. It is however a highly regarded form of abstract music, with its own rules (which are quite often broken) and accepted forms (which are not always adhered to). In fact, if you try to define what a symphony actually is, you quite quickly come unstuck. Consider the following: Any musicologist worth his salt will tell you that a symphony: Generally comprises four sections or "movements" (although it can have any number; Mahler's symphonies usually have 5, Messiaen's have up to 10, plus there are numerous single-movement symphonies. Mendelssohn’s symphonies have movements, but mostly they are not discrete sections, they tend to merge together seamlessly into a continuous stream of music.) The first movement is usually in a fast tempo, then there is a slow movement, followed by a "scherzo" or movement in 3/4 time, then a fast finale with a rousing conclusion. (Again there are plenty of examples that do not fit this pattern at all. Tchaikovsky’s 6th and Mahler’s 9th both end with slow ponderous adagios; Shostakovich’s 6th opens with a long almost painfully slow adagio, etc. Bax didn’t bother with scherzos at all; every one of his symphonies have just 3 movements.) It is written for an ensemble orchestra without solo parts. (But Sorabji’s and Widor's symphonies are mostly for solo organ, Bernstein's 2nd is more like a piano concerto, Malcolm Williamson wrote a symphony for voices alone, and some of Glenn Branca's are written for massed electric guitars!) It lasts approximately 30-40 minutes (But nearly all of Mahler's last well over an hour; Mozart's early symphonies and Brian's late ones last less than 10 minutes.) The first movement is usually written in a style called "Sonata form"; the third or “Scherzo” movement is in triple time, and the finale is in rondo form. Most Russian symphonies don't, they have their own ideas about what a symphony sounds like, and it differs considerably from the accepted Germanic standard set down by the Viennese school of composers. (I will attempt to explain such descriptions as sonata form, scherzo & rondo later.) So, after weighing all that up, we come to the conclusion that a symphony is - a piece of music! You could write a 5-minute banjo solo and call it a symphony if these rules are anything to go by. The dictionary definition of the word symphony is literally "sounding together" - that's all it means. So even by that definition, Widor's solo organ symphonies are out - they only involve one instrument. Surely "sounding together" implies more than one...? It might be more appropriate to look for a definition of the word Symphonic instead, as that may be more helpful. Lots of things can be – and often are – called symphonic, and not all of them have anything to do with music. I have heard paintings being called symphonic, even computer programs. It seems to me that the word conveys any work of any type that has had a great deal of thought put into its conception, and has a specific design right from the start. You could call the Sistine Chapel painting symphonic. You could even call Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction symphonic at a pinch – it was at least designed to look exactly as it does (apart from the crumbling bits!) but I would not call the London Underground symphonic, as it was not designed as a complete finished work It started off quite small and grew over the years as London itself grew. I hope you can see the distinction. The London Underground is more organic than symphonic. So, getting back to the music, if a symphony is basically “symphonic” as I’m sure it must be, then it must also fit these criteria. It must have a certain complexity that is an integral part of its design. So that’s my definition of a symphony, and I’m sticking with it. So going by the above guidelines, the symphonies that deviate the least from them are probably Brahms's four, I reckon - even Beethoven's output of nine deviate in one way or another. DvoYák's nine symphonies are also quite acceptable as benchmarks for a standard symphony - at least for a late C19th model. For the C18th you would find Mozart's middle period symphonies and most of Haydn's late ones quite acceptable. But what about a model for C20th symphonies? The C20th saw the most radical departures from the symphonic norm ever, and it's hard to pin down a typical C20th work. Prokofiev's 5th, perhaps, or Walton's 1st, or Tippett's 1st and 2nd (not very well-known works, but they deserve to be.) However, going by my definition deriving from the term symphonic opens the door to extremely diverse styles, which basically encompasses all other symphonies past and present (and probably future too.) The upshot of all this is that the term symphony is extremely loose, but for a novice it helps to learn the way the form developed over the centuries, which in turn makes it easier to see why each composer chose to bend the rules in his own particular way. So, let's start at the beginning... SO WHO WROTE THE FIRST SYMPHONY? There is no "first symphony" as such; but its development can be traced way back to medieval times when musicians would play little suites of dances for ceremonies and special occasions, or even just for tavern or street music, of which there seems to have been a great deal in those days. These suites would be made up of several dance tunes in different rhythms and speeds for the party guests to dance to. An excellent example of this would be the suite called Dansereye by Tylman Susato (c1500-c1561). Not much is known of Susato; he lived in Antwerp and seems to have been more of a music collector than a writer, but the tunes he either collected or wrote are very engaging. At that time, music was very sparsely annotated compared to today's standards, and instrumentation was open to whatever musicians were around at the time to play it, so each performance was more or less unique. The main reason Susato's music survives is mainly due to the fact that music printing had just come into existence at the time, and Susato was employed as a calligrapher in Antwerp as well as being a respected musician in the town. This combination of skills resulted in Susato's music being the earliest printed music in the world, and hence survives intact today. So is Susato the "father" of the symphony? Well... no. But he is definitely an ancestor of sorts. Dansereye is basically dance music as its title suggests, but the idea of small connected pieces that make up a larger whole has its genesis here. Moving on almost a century, we come across Michael Praetorius, and his lovely collection of dance tunes called Terpsichore ("Terp-sickory") from 1612. Not much has changed since Susato's time, the only advance being that Praetorius specifies his instruments much more precisely. Terpsichore comprises over 300 dance tunes collected by Praetorius, but he arranges them in what he called Whole consort or Broken consort. Whole consort means basically instruments of the same family such as strings or wind instruments, and consequently Broken consort refers to a more mixed bag of instruments. In his own words, a broken consort is "when several persons with a variety of instruments, such as a clavicembalo or large spinet, large viol, harp, lutes, theorbos, pandoras, cither, viola da gamba, solemn trombone or racket are gathered together in company to form a smooth, gracious and harmonious ensemble, and to play together in sweet accord." Praetorius gives each instrument in the ensemble its own distinct voice, which in a way is the beginning of orchestral "colour" so beloved of the best composers of the later centuries. The music is still intended to be danced to, but the orchestral form of the symphony has its roots here, even if the instruments themselves are unfamiliar to today's audiences. Another century on and we find ourselves now in the early C18th. The man around whom all music seems to revolve (and indeed evolve) at this point in time is Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Bach has very little to do with the development of the symphony, at least not directly, but without his invention of the Equal Temperament scale of tuning, music wouldn’t have developed much further at all. But Bach had two sons (amongst his 20-odd children), Johann Christian and Carl Phillip Emmanuel, who were writers of the embryonic symphony - sometimes called Overture, or Concerto Grosso, or even Sonata (musical forms of all kinds were being developed at this stage, and had not yet formed separate identities.) The musical form that came to be known as a symphony in the mid-1700’s developed mainly from the Italian Overture, which tended to have three sections in the sequence fast-slow-fast. From this and the dance suite form previously discussed, the early C18th symphony began to take shape. Another good example of an early C18th symphonic composer would be William Boyce (1711 - 1779) – an English composer no less! He wrote a handful of short symphonies in the Italian style between 1739 and 1756; each lasting between 5 and 10 minutes. Charming little miniatures; they also serve as a base-point for comparison against the later C18th model. Not much else is heard musically (symphonic or otherwise) from England from this point right up to the time of Elgar at the end on the C19th, giving rise to the rather unfair label Land Without Music. Even Boyce was considered a lightweight; not a contributor to the feverish musical development going on in the heart of Europe. THE 18TH CENTURY SYMPHONY - THE CLASSICAL PERIOD The earliest symphonies tend to be less than ten minutes long, and nearly always fast-slow-fast, with each section having very little if anything to do (thematically) with the others. As well as J.C and C.P.E. Bach, other composers are generally credited with developing the early symphony; namely Monn, Sammartini and Stamitz – the latter inserted a fourth movement (usually placed third) called the Minuet. Now the stage is set – the symphony has become a discrete musical form, all it needs is a master composer to give it the breath of life and send it out into the world. Enter Joseph Haydn. Haydn is generally credited with being the “godfather” of the symphony – and with good reason. Not simply because he wrote over 100 of them in his lifetime (some composers, i.e. Molter, wrote more), but because Haydn took the idea and stretched it; twisted it into new shapes like a novelty balloon-blower at a children’s party. Haydn found the symphony a mere musical whim; he left it an artistic creation with a great deal of merit. Many of Haydn’s symphonies are still performed regularly today by full-blown orchestras, even though some of them were written for only a handful of players. Haydn incorporated Stamitz’s idea of the Minuet as a third movement, and introduced a Trio to go with it, so we have the Minuet & Trio as a standard 3rd movement. He often gave the first movement a slow introduction before the main theme starts – but not always. He sometimes changed the order of the movements. Three early symphonies of his, called Morning, Noon and Evening (nos. 6, 7 and 8) have several solos in each movement, written for specific players in the orchestra of Prince Esterhazy, Haydn’s employer. Haydn loved playing little jokes on his audience occasionally; the most famous being in the Farewell symphony (no.45) where after a furious finale, the music suddenly stops – then restarts with a slow languid theme, then each player in turn leaves the stage till at the end there are just two solo violins, who bring the music to a thoughtful close then also snuff out their candles and leave the darkened stage. The music was written in response to the players complaining that they hadn’t had a holiday in months, which makes the whole symphony a kind of “protest song”. (The prince apparently took the hint, and gave them their holiday!) Now we move rapidly on to 1772, and a few hundred miles away in Prague a precocious teenager – already an old hand at composition - is busy writing symphonies in profusion. His name? Why do you need to ask? You know exactly who I’m referring to. The upstart genius himself; Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus… (known to his friends as Amadeus) Mozart. It is a common mistake to suppose that Mozart succeeded Haydn in symphonic writing. In fact since Mozart only lived for 35 years and Haydn more than twice that, the old master was still writing symphonies (and other forms of music) long after Mozart’s death, although his style was almost certainly affected by the younger genius. Mozart’s contribution to the symphony was to make it more dynamic, more intense, introducing complex contrapuntal techniques and intricate key changes etc. (Sorry about the word “contrapuntal” slipping in there, I must be more careful! I promise I’ll try to keep it simple.) His final three symphonies; nos. 39 to 41 were reputedly all written within the space of six weeks in 1791, but their impact on the musical world was enormous. Had Mozart lived even five more years, who knows what wonders he might have unleashed on the world, with these three masterly works alone it is obvious that his star was still ascending to unexplored heights of musical perfection. It is also worth asking the question that had he lived into the C19th, what effect would he have had on the young Beethoven, who wrote his first relatively unremarkable symphony at the turn of that century? However, before we plunge headlong into another century let’s take stock of what we (or an audience of the time) might have been aware of symphony-wise. There are really only two composers we can point to at this stage; Haydn and Mozart. Their best works (in my opinion at least) would be: Haydn’s Best Symphonies: Nos 6, 7 & 8 Morning, Noon and Evening (Le Matin, Le Midi & Le Soir) – as described earlier. No.39 - A rarely heard work, but one of my favourites as I heard it when still in my teens. The music has a disturbing air of despondency and contains brief pauses every now and then, like someone sobbing quietly behind a closed door. No.44 the Mourning (Trauer). Haydn was experimenting with minor keys at this point in what came to be known as his Sturm und Drang period (meaning “Storm and Stress”.) This was the start of attempts to put emotions into instrumental music – the culmination of which was Mahler’s colossal shouts of anguish in his 2nd, 6th and 9th symphonies 130 years later. No.45 the Farewell – as described earlier. No.60 The Distraction (Il Distratto) - plays like a regular four-movement Haydn symphony for about 20 minutes, but then he cheekily adds two more movements just when you think it’s all over. In the finale proper, the orchestra makes a deliberate false start, screeches to a halt, then “tunes up” before starting again – when played properly, it’s quite shocking! Haydn couldn’t resist his little jokes. No.73 The Chase (La Chasse) – the finale is based on hunting calls and portrays a foxhunt quite effectively. This could almost be called “Programme music” in which case it is the first of its kind, pre-dating Beethoven’s Pastoral by 30 years. No.94 The Surprise – with its famous sneaky tune in the second movement to lull the audience into a false sense of security; then a sudden loud bang to wake them up! No.96 The Miracle – so called because at the premiere the audience all gathered up close to the stage to get a glimpse of Haydn – and a large chandelier came crashing down behind them! Nobody was hurt, and the name stuck – although for some reason the name “Miracle” is sometimes given to no.102 instead. (Maybe they should have called it the “Chandelier” symphony, or perhaps the “Del Boy”! “Alright Rodney, when I say free…”) One note of warning here; although I will be keeping technical jargon to a minimum, I can’t avoid talking about the main style of symphonic writing which is called Sonata Form, and consists of such sections as Exposition, Development, Recapitulation and usually a Coda. Please read the definition of these terms in the glossary at the back of the book if you don’t know what they are, as they crop up a lot from now on, and there’s no getting away from them! Mozart’s Best Symphonies: No.36 The Linz – supposedly written in four DAYS in 1783. Go figure. (There was no no.37 by Mozart, only an introduction to a symphony written by another composer.) No.38 The Prague. Possibly Mozart’s longest symphony at 30-35 minutes, but comprising only three movements – i.e. no Minuet & Trio. The opening movement has a long slow introduction before the main theme gets underway, which is one of Mozart’s best, and he really puts all he’s got into it. No.39 in E flat. Nos. 39-41 are Mozart’s “Big Three” which he is supposed to have written entirely in the space of six weeks. What was the rush? Probably nothing; it was just his way. No.40 The famous G minor, of which much has already been said by just about everybody. It’s supposed to be melancholy, but I don’t think so. It isn’t a patch on Haydn’s Sturm & Drang symphonies in my opinion, although it’s still an accomplished work and damn and blast it, you’re SUPPOSED to like it! No.41 The Jupiter - Mozart’s last and most complex symphony. A bit rich for my taste, it seems to me to be uneven and bumpy, with too many stops & starts in the 1st movement. The finale gets a bit hectic too, but it’s apparently quite popular for all that. From these descriptions you can probably tell that I am more of a Haydn fan than a Mozart one – I could name probably a dozen more Haydn symphonies that I like, but from Mozart’s output of 41 symphonies, these five are the only ones I can appreciate. But that’s just my opinion, and I am entitled to it! For me, Haydn remains the true master of the C18th symphony, and his nickname as the Godfather of the Symphony is well earned. I’m skipping quickly over the Haydn/Mozart era in any case, as there is no real point in examining these early symphonies in too much detail. There are plenty of other and more knowledgeable musicologists around who have done that already, and I want to concentrate purely on the impact the music has had on me personally and that means advancing to the 19th and 20th centuries, so let’s move on. Just before I do however, I’ll just have a go at explaining the point a lot of people make concerning symphonies, and that is; why don’t they all have names? Why use numbers at all? Well, as you can see by the above lists, some symphonies do indeed have names, but the vast majority don’t. In H & M’s time they didn’t have numbers either; they were known by their key definitions, so the one we know of as Mozart’s no.40 nowadays was simply called the “G minor” at the time. It wasn’t even the 40th symphony Mozart wrote, as he was so prolific that even he didn’t bother counting them, and they were only numbered decades later. Even then a few were left out because they had been lost at the time, and some undoubtedly still are. A catalogue of Haydn’s symphonies lists 108 completed ones and several fragments and alternative versions of others, but only 104 are numbered specifically, and still nowhere near chronologically. As for the ones that do have names, some of them were named specifically by the composer, and others received their names years afterwards (like the Jupiter for example. That wasn’t Mozart’s own title.) Sometimes I like to add my own pet names to my favourite symphonies, like DvoYák s  Brown symphony (no.7). Well, it sounds very brown to me! Anyway, a symphony is basically abstract (at least most of them are) and so giving them a name would evoke connotations and irrelevant meanings that were never intended by the composer. Mahler initially named his first symphony Titan but then withdrew the name after the first performance, preferring it to be known simply as “No.1 in D minor”, and there are plenty of other examples. So now you know. THE 19TH CENTURY SYMPHONY At the dawn of the new century a new figure steps – no, strides boldly and grumpily into the spotlight. He hails from Bonn, a city not known for any great musical talent. He is already 30 years old, and has a great deal of music to his credit, although at this point mostly chamber and solo piano music. His musical training was provided by Haydn, who he would later criticise as having “taught him nothing” (there’s gratitude for you). He is slightly worried that he sometimes has difficulty hearing what people are saying. His name, of course, is Ludwig Van Beethoven. By 1804, and with two none-too-modest symphonies under his belt, he decides on a new tack. Beethoven is a great admirer of Napoleon, who he regards as the “Champion of the poor”. His new symphony, he states, is about Bonaparte. Mutters of confusion amongst the audience. “How can a piece of music be about anything?” they ask. Well, that’s a good question. Up to this point, music has been purely abstract. Even Haydn’s Sturm und Drang works couldn’t be attached to any real event in people’s lives – they were abstractions, with no link to reality. Music - you either danced to it, prayed to it, or (if you were a prince and could afford it) had it playing quietly in the background at your dinner parties to entertain your guests. Well the guests at the first performance of Herr Ludwig’s new work are about to have their whole cosy musical world blown away. Beethoven is a new breed of composer. All composers before him were employees of the rich; paid to produce works for their employers’ ears alone, who sometimes even took the credit for writing them too. Haydn is a prime example of this arrangement, although towards the end of his life he was given free reign to write what he pleased. Beethoven however, was an artist, and made sure people knew it. He wrote what he wanted when he wanted, and if people liked what he wrote they might commission him for a new work or offer to pay for his music to be performed for them, which they did. But what Beethoven wrote continually enraged audiences and patrons alike. He simply didn’t play by the rules. He was the quintessential musical maverick, insisting that he was a member of the nobility by virtue of his talent alone. This tended to upset people in high places; on one occasion he famously remarked to a prince, “You are a mere prince. There are hundreds of princes. I am Beethoven! The will only ever be one Beethoven!” Basically he was an arrogant S.O.B., but he had something to be arrogant about! He knew that his music would live on after him while princes come and go with predictable regal monotony. So we come to his third symphony, subtitled the Eroica – the Heroic, and heroic it certainly is. Imagine an audience of music-loving but narrow-minded aristocrats (for which you can’t really blame them at this point in time, used to hearing the aural tidiness of Haydn and Mozart), sitting down and trying to take in this roaring tidal wave of music. If I had a time machine, and could visit any musical performance of the past, this is the one I would visit just to see the looks on their faces. They must have been horrified! Their whole world was being kicked away by this insane music that ebbed and flowed like no music had ever done before. Offbeat rhythms; crazy scurrilous string passages; triple horns blazing out strident fanfares… The cosy world of the baroque had gone for good. This was music with raw emotion. It depicts the heat of battle, the charging horses, the power and passion of conquest, and all in pure musical terms. Then just as the first movement comes to a rousing conclusion finishing on the same two loud chords as it started; we are plunged into a bleak funeral march the like of which had no precedent. The music almost disintegrates at the end, breaking up into pieces separated by long pauses, as if sobbing quietly at some great loss. A lament for a hero. Then just as we are recovering from that, Beethoven gives us his new invention – the Scherzo1. No dainty dance-like Minuet & Trio like the old masters of the previous century, but a skittish piece in compound triple time, with those horns again sounding out a chorale-like tune which hangs in the air at the end of the Trio – a question unanswered. Then hot on the heels of that is the finale; intended to follow with hardly a pause for breath; presenting us with almost the simplest tune imaginable to throw the audience off their guard, then proceeding to put said tune through a seemingly inexhaustible profusion of variations till they must have been quite dizzy trying to keep up. If there can be such a thing as Wide-Screen Music, then this is it. It is worth mentioning that when Beethoven heard that Napoleon had declared himself emperor, he scribbled out the name Bonaparte from the title page of the symphony and changed the dedication to “The memory of a great man”. Most people are in agreement that Beethoven was referring to himself. As Haydn had noted after hearing it for the first time, Beethoven had put himself in the centre of his own music; the Artist as Hero. And thus, with this one piece of music the Romantic era was born. The door had been flung open to composers such as Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, and ultimately Mahler, to bare their souls in their music throughout the next hundred years. If Haydn was the symphony’s Godfather, then Beethoven was its P.E. teacher and spiritual guide: Haydn successfully oversaw its development into adolescence, Beethoven gave it muscles and kicked it out into the Big Wide World with a swagger. After the Eroica came the strident Fifth, which has no official name but is sometimes subtitled “Thus Fate knocks at the door” or simply Fate. And at the same time he was writing this martial music he was also working on the 6th – the Pastoral. Music that instantly evokes feelings of being at one with the countryside, with its birdcalls, peasant dances and babbling brooks. Both were introduced to the public in the same evening in December 1808 in a four-hour all-Beethoven concert in freezing conditions at the Theatre an der Wien in Vienna. By this time Beethoven was acutely aware of his oncoming deafness, and had great difficulty in coming to terms that he – the greatest composer in the world (he knew exactly who he was) couldn’t hear his own compositions; couldn’t even hear himself play the piano without jamming one end of a metal pipe in his ear and holding the other end to the wooden frame of the piano. Yet he went on to write three more symphonies and a vast catalogue of other works in the ensuing 20 years, including of course the glorious 9th or Choral symphony - by which time he was totally deaf. At the first performance of this huge Ode to Joy, he clambered up onto the stage and tried to conduct the orchestra through the finale (even though he couldn’t hear a note) and had to be ushered onto the side of the stage where he stood and watched the orchestra (although according to some accounts he stayed on stage throughout the work). Then at the end, with the stone deaf maestro not even realising that it had finished, the actual conductor walked over to him and gently turned him around to face the rapturous applause of the audience, whose joy and appreciation he could at least see. A lovely story. While I am here I should of course mention his other symphonies. The general consensus is that B’s best symphonies were the odd-numbered ones, specifically 3,5,7 and 9. But each one of them is a masterpiece in its own right, and each reflects a different aspect of the composer’s inner thoughts. The 1st, written at the rather advanced age of 30, sees Beethoven emulating his teacher Haydn to some degree, although right from the first bar it asserts its individuality by opening with a what sounds like a closing cadence or musical “full stop” – very original! The 2nd is similar in style but greatly expanded, stretching the Haydnesque form to its limits. Then comes the ground-breaking 3rd discussed earlier, followed by the 4th which takes a step back from the brink and returns us briefly to the safe world of Haydn and Mozart – albeit through Beethoven’s ears (which were still fairly good at that time). Then comes the strident 5th, which must have shocked and scared audiences at the time with its clamorous cacophany and confident swagger. Revolutionary music for revolutionary times indeed. It must have sounded then like a heavy metal concert sounds to us now; ominous and threatening. Then all is sweetness and light again in the Pastoral 6th, by which time everybody had more or less come to the conclusion that Beethoven was ready for the funny farm. Someone famously remarked of his 7th that he “must have been drunk when he wrote it”, and it’s not hard to understand why. The music of the 7th is (as always with Beethoven) confident, but also unpredictable and slightly off-kilter. The offbeat opening to the Scherzo is said to take even the best orchestras by surprise and always sounds like the musical equivalent of a rugby scrum, and the Bacchanalian finale sounds like a drunken riot in full swing with party-goers dangling from the chandeliers. Wagner famously called it the “apotheosis of the dance”. Then we come to the 8th, and again Beethoven steps back from the brink and gives us a demure well-dressed piece – but beware! The finale has some surprises in store, including a cheeky semitone drop when you least expect it, and just when you think it’s all over it carries on for another three or four minutes, chuckling away to itself. Then of course there is the Glorious 9th… Beethoven took a long time to get around to writing his 9th symphony, in fact it very nearly didn’t get written at all. It was only when he received a commission of £50 from the Philharmonic Society of London in 1822 that he got to work. But when the symphony finally arrived two years after that it brought the house down. A good 70 minutes long on average, it leaves all the others standing in terms of sheer scale, not only of length but breadth and scope. Everybody goes on about the choral finale and the “Ode to Joy”, but personally I find the three preceding movements to be colossal musical statements in their own right. This is not so much a symphony as a musical event. You have to hear the whole thing to put the finale into context; it’s no good listening to it on its own. The mighty 1st movement, which lasts as long as most Mozart symphonies by itself, sets the scene for over an hour of magnificent musical discourse. The scherzo (which Beethoven places second for a change – another new idea) with its bold punctuation on the timpani delighted the first audience and provoked a spontaneous cheer. It could be the Gods themselves having a heated argument, then finally agreeing to disagree. Then comes the serene third movement, washing away the remains of the Olympian anger and itself melting away at the end. Then… wham! A huge discord blasts out, followed by what sounds like a question blared out by the whole orchestra. No, not a question, more like a demand. What now? We hear past themes from the previous three movements trotted out for inspection, one by one, to be judged unworthy in turn. No, that won’t do, nor that. What about…? No. NO. There must be something else. Something MORE. Then… A quiet little tune appears in the low strings, and begins to grow. Tentatively at first, then gaining in confidence till it fills the whole orchestra. Yes! This is it! But wait! Something’s still missing. The discordant howl screams out again, like a huge animal in pain. STOP! STOP!!!! Now Beethoven pulls his masterstroke. The orchestra slams its brakes on so hard you almost get whiplash, and then a human voice is heard for the first time after almost an hour of music. “O friends! Not these sounds!” (“O freunde! Nicht diese töne!”) After that everything is raised another notch, and the symphony goes into overdrive. The Ode to Joy is sung in all its glory, and it’s like the sun shining for the first time in a hundred years. The cobwebs are swept away, and everything is light. Truly magnificent. What would Haydn or Mozart have made of it, I wonder? So next time you get the urge to listen to it, play it all the way through, don’t just content yourself with the Ode section. Give yourself the luxury of setting aside 70-80 minutes of your time, and hear the whole symphony as it was meant to be heard. It’s well worth it! (My favourite CD of the Choral is by the Roy Goodman conducting the Hanover Band. It’s played on original C19th instruments and C19th tuning, and manages to get through the whole piece in just over an hour without rushing, but imparts a sense of excitement to the whole thing. It’s how I imagine Beethoven actually meant it to sound, and there are one or two surprises to anyone who thinks they know the piece.) Just before I move on however, I must mention Carl Maria von Weber, and his two contributions to the symphonic genre. A contemporary of Beethoven and basically overshadowed by him for his entire life, he nevertheless produced some fine music, of which his two symphonies are good examples. Both written between 1806 and 1807, in other words during Beethoven’s most prolific period, and so never really got the attention they deserved. Pity. Give them a listen too if you get a chance. THE EARLY ROMANTIC PERIOD – BERLIOZ & MENDELSSOHN We now move forward three years to 1827 – old Ludwig is on his deathbed at the grand old age of 57, and his protégée the symphony is progressing into confident adulthood. Our journey now takes us to France, where a young romantic called Hector Berlioz is about to pour his own brand of passion into the genre. Berlioz won’t have any truck with numbers for his symphonies; being French n’est-ce pas?, he gives them names instead – and the first symphonic utterance from his pen is labelled the Fantastic or Symphonie Fantastique, subtitled “An episode in the life of an Artist”. Which artist? Why, himself, of course. Berlioz (1803-1869) picked up the idea of the Artist as Hero from Beethoven and ran with it. After a love affair with a singer called Harriet Smithson that went disastrously wrong, he spilled his emotions onto the music stave with a vengeance; depicting the object of his tragic desire with a recurring theme that ran throughout the whole of the five movement work. Hang on - Five movements? Where did that extra movement come from? The only symphony prior to this with five movements was Beethoven’s Pastoral, which had the third, fourth and fifth movements joined together into a seamless whole. The extra movement was the “Storm” sequence, which suggested a real thunderstorm, and nobody worried about it at the time as it fitted logically into the sound world that Beethoven had created. But this was new – a symphony without a number, and with five separate movements each of which had its own title to boot. First movement: Reveries, Passions. 2nd mvt: Scene at a Ball. Followed by Scene in the Fields, then March to the Scaffold and finally The Witches Sabbath. Glory be. These titles wouldn’t look out of place on a Uriah Heep album! Berlioz was the first composer to use the idea of a recurring theme or what he called an idée fixee HYPERLINK \l "_Notes_kindly_supplied" 2 or “fixed idea”) in his music – not just a simple meaningless tune but a melody which represented a character; the appearance of this theme then becomes the character and the music takes on the role of background to that character. This idea is still in use today, especially in film music. The next time you watch a Star Wars film (especially Empire or Return), notice that each time you see a certain character such as Darth Vader, you hear a certain theme that represents him. (You know the one; Da da da, dum-ti-da, dum-ti-da... Take a bow, John Williams.) Even if that character isn’t on screen you might hear the tune if another character is talking about him or thinking about him. The character and the tune become connected in your mind subconsciously. Wagner also used the idea in his operas, but he didn’t invent it. The origin of this kind of musical representation is in fact the Fantastic Symphony by Berlioz. So as the music unfolds we hear in pure musical terms the adventures of the aforesaid artist, and his fixation with the object of his desire. In the first movement we hear him reminiscing about all the good times they had; the music (mostly just strings) leaps and dives like impassioned lovers consumed by each other. In the second movement they are at the aforementioned ball engaged in a lively waltz; the idée fixee becoming a part of the waltz tune. The third movement sees the artist standing on a hilltop – alone. The music portrays a superb sense of isolation; the pertinent tune wafting across the scene like a hint of perfume. At the start of the movement there is a little duet between two oboes representing shepherds – one fairly nearby, the other in the distance; answering the call. The near one returns at the end, but it is answered only by the distant thunder (a soft drum roll). This is Beethoven’s Pastoral idea taken one step further - exquisite sound painting. You can hear the sunset in the music, and almost feel the evening breeze cool and settle around you. Magnificent. So far so good. But there are still two movements to come – and the next one is the now famous March to the Scaffold. Things start to get ugly from this point – but in a fascinating and musically exquisite way. Berlioz states that his hero has tried to poison himself with an overdose of opium (I wonder how close this is to the truth?) and has a terrifying dream that he is about to be executed for the murder of his loved one. There is a muffled drum roll, then raucous fanfares spit out a sarcastic marching tune – the hero is being marched up to the waiting guillotine. Then a sudden pause – the idée fixee makes one brief final appearance. The doomed hero’s last thought? Then – CHOP! His head rolls; the drums roll and the movement ends with another brief fanfare. But this still isn’t the end! That was only a dream; he is still alive and still apparently dreaming. Now we are led smack into the hurly-burly of the Witches’ Sabbath. This movement almost defies description; it simply has to be heard to be believed. After a short schizophrenic introduction that sets the gruesome scene, the music dies away and there is a brief pause before a loud bell starts tolling; repeating the same three notes over and over again like a demented church bell ringer locked in the belfry. Interlacing this call to arms the horns then shout out a long lolloping tune (based on the Dies Irae – an ancient Gregorian chant) like some angry striding giant. This is subsequently answered by the trombones in a similar vein, but double the speed; followed up at the rear by the woodwind section sounding like some crippled midget trying to keep up with the others. This misfit trio stamp about for a while like the Addams family woken up by that damn bell, then eventually the scene changes; we then hear a crazy fugue on the strings which evokes a huge orgy with bodies falling over each other; the fugue theme dies away then returns but in the wrong key, building up to a climax where the giant strides are heard again on the trombones, then a brief but remarkable passage where the strings play “col legno” (tapping their bows on the strings) - to me it sounds like a plague of bats flitting about. Then another similar passage on flutes that immediately makes me think of mice and rats scurrying around. I’ve never heard these analogies suggested anywhere else but to me that’s exactly what they sound like. The whole movement is rounded out by more colossal grotesque fanfares and a final chord hammered out 25 times in the last three seconds. And remember this was written in 1830. Beethoven’s body is hardly cold. At this point we start to see the first divisions in musical development in terms of nationality. The German symphonic tradition, which had its roots in Haydn and Mozart, continued through Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn, only to lose its potency in the mid-1800’s mainly due to the operatic output of Wagner. Wagner wasn’t interested in symphonies despite having written a couple of early ones, and so in Germany at least there was a gap of some 30 years where no German would have any truck with them. However, in other countries the idea of the symphony started to catch on. Berlioz himself wrote three more, but in his usual method of eschewing numbers for names, called them Funereal & Triumphant, Romeo and Juliet, and Harold in Italy (which is certainly more of a symphony than the viola concerto it was supposed to be.) Also in France we hear the 16 year-old Georges Bizet’s bright and breezy first symphony which bounces along with youthful zest. And over in Sweden, Franz Berwald took up the symphonic baton and produced four works, which are often overlooked, but excellent pieces none the less. (As for the Italians – well, it seems they were far more preoccupied with Opera to write any decent symphonies. Do you know of any? I don’t.) However, back in the pre-Wagnerite Fatherland there were symphonies aplenty emerging on the scene, so kindly allow me to pay tribute to some of my favourites here before we go on. It has been said that Schubert tended to work on one piece at a time, never starting a work until he was satisfied with the one he was working on, which seems an odd thing to say when you know that he actually left an awful lot of them uncompleted. At the time of his death just eighteen months after his hero Beethoven, the world knew of just six Schubertian symphonies, all of them quite lightweight but still competent. (The one we now know as no.9 turned up a while later.) There were also sketches for a seventh, but that was considered to be all. More on Schubert in a moment… Schumann’s symphonic total is four – definitely four. Although the one known as the 4th was actually the first one to be written! This sort of thing happens a lot with the earlier composers, as lost works are rediscovered and entered into the catalogues, in most cases nobody bothers to renumber the rest, and to do so would cause confusion anyway. (The exception to this is DvoYák, whose symphonies were completely renumbered in the 1950 s. You can still find old LP s of his New World marked as no.5. Nowadays of course it’s referred to as the 9th.) As a foursome, Schumann’s symphonies are appealing but hardly earth moving, and he is generally considered to be “not terribly good” at orchestration. Some of his works were re-arranged by later composers (notably Mahler) to better effect. Then we come to Mendelssohn, or Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy to give him his full name. Mendelssohn is my absolute favourite C19th composer, bar none. Every single note he wrote sparkles with light. Every phrase radiates beauty. I have often heard these praises heaped on Mozart, but in my humble opinion every note of Mendelssohn’s is worth 10 of Mozart’s. At least. Mendelssohn’s total symphonic count is five, plus twelve string symphonies he wrote while barely into his teens. Mendelssohn’s five (fully orchestral) symphonies then, are: The 1st in C minor (1824). Written at the tender age of 15, a scintillating half-hour that rattles along at a terrific pace, and has some elements of Haydn’s Sturm & Drang in its nature. There isn’t a single wasted note anywhere, which is generally true of all of Mendelssohn’s output. The 2nd, called the Hymn of Praise or Lobgesang (1839). This is Mendelssohn’s answer to Beethoven’s Choral symphony, except in M’s case the chorus is ¾ of the whole work. A magnificent shout of joy, almost the equal of the great master himself, and deserving of more publicity than it generally gets. It was actually written to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the printing press and was premiered in the Town Hall in Birmingham in 1840 (my home town!) The 3rd, or Scottish symphony (1842). What can I say about this piece? Sumptuous. Chocolatey. Passionate. It wraps itself around you like warm treacle, and keeps you in a cocoon of pure bliss for the best part of an hour. Musical perfection. Yes, perfection; I’m not exaggerating. This symphony is absolutely unimproveable. It could have been written by God. The 4th, or Italian (1833). Similar in some ways to the 1st, it glides along effortlessly, with all four movements merged into an almost seamless whole (as does the 3rd, a recurring trait of M’s with exotic results.) This is one of the symphonies I heard all those years ago on a collection of 78rpm discs, and I still get the urge to get up and change sides every four minutes when listening to this one. So it turns out there is an “Italian” symphony after all, only it wasn’t written by an Italian, so there! The 5th, or Reformation (1830). I’m not as familiar with this one as I am with the others, and not as impressed, but having said that it is still a beautiful work and always welcome on my turntable so to speak. (It was written to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Diet of Augsburg of 1530.) As well as the five orchestral symphonies listed here, Mendelssohn also wrote 12 symphonies for strings alone between 1821 and 1823 (age 12 to 14). Youthful works they may be, but inferior or immature they are not. Mendelssohn’s music has been unjustly neglected over the years, mainly I believe because of the Nazis’ lumping of his entire output with their detestable label Entartete musik (Degenerate music) during the Jewish purges in the 1930’s and 40’s. Believe me, there is NOTHING degenerate about Mendelssohn’s music, quite the opposite. It is also said that whenever Wagner conducted a piece by Mendelssohn he wore gloves so he wouldn’t be “soiled” by M’s music. After the performance, Wagner would take off the gloves and throw them on the floor to be swept away by a janitor. Another conductor (whose name escapes me for the moment, but I think it might have been Otto Klemperer) also wore white gloves to conduct M’s music, but as a mark of respect. I know which of these I prefer. Mendelssohn gets my undying respect and admiration, and I love every note he ever wrote with unbridled passion. His Scottish symphony is my idea of musical perfection, and his overture to the Hebrides (“Fingal’s Cave”) is on an equal footing. There is nothing in the entire output of music that can touch either of these works, except perhaps for other pieces by the same composer, or Beethoven’s greatest masterpieces. When he died he was just 38. If only he’d lived even just 10 years more, I’m sure he could have left us many more sublime works. Theoretically he could have lived into Mahler’s time, but sadly it didn’t happen. It seems that a great deal of the best composers died tragically young. (Gershwin 39, Chopin 39, Bizet 37, Mozart 35, Schubert 31…) I can’t help wondering what unimaginable masterpieces have been lost to us. Still, Long Live Mendelssohn  I salute you! THE MID-ROMANTIC PERIOD  LISZT, DVOXÁK, TCHAIKOVSKY, BRAHMS Now we reach the mid-point of the C19th, but before we venture any further let s take a couple of steps back to review a remarkable work that was completely unknown at the time – because its writer left it unfinished in a drawer in his writing desk, then subsequently died young. I am referring of course, to Schubert’s famous Unfinished Symphony. Schubert lived in the same town as Beethoven, but his character couldn’t have been more different from his hero’s fiery demeanour. Schubert was a quiet shy man, who regularly saw Beethoven drinking in his local tavern, but could never pluck up enough courage to talk to him – which is a pity, as we will never know if a meeting between them might have given Schubert enough courage to complete some of his unfinished works. Schubert left dozens of works uncompleted, the most famous of which is the one numbered 8. Schubert’s symphonies are on the whole quite lightweight, more in the style of Haydn than Beethoven, but this one piece in two rather long movements sounds as if it had been written by a totally different composer. Maybe Schubert was deliberately trying something new, we will never know. We will also never know what impact it might have made on the musical world in 1823 when Schubert wrote it. Beethoven was still alive and still composing in that year – what would he have made of it if Schubert had plucked up the courage to show it to him in the tavern? We can only guess. Instead he gave the uncompleted manuscript to a friend (Josef Hüttenbrenner), who promptly forgot about it. (Fool!) Beethoven died in March 1827 having no knowledge of Schubert’s existence, who subsequently followed him to the grave a year and a half later at the tender age of just 31. His forgotten masterpiece was not rediscovered for another 37 years, in 1865. By that time, the music world had changed completely. Symphonies were out of fashion and symphonic poems were “in”, and their champion was Franz Liszt. Liszt did write two true symphonies however, and I should mention them here: the Dante (1856) and the Faust (1857). I came to these works relatively recently, and was impressed with them straight away. The Dante is an excellent work in its own right, with a beautifully serene 2nd movement and ending with a rousing chorus. But the Faust is the one I want to concentrate on. It’s in three huge movements each approaching half an hour, titled respectively Faust, Gretchen and of course Mephistopheles. I don’t intend to go into the details of the story of Faust here, as neither did Liszt, concerning himself purely with the musical depiction of the three characters of the novel. The first movement is a bold depiction of Faust, fiery and confident, with a main theme which is of considerable interest in itself. It comprises four descending sets each of three ascending notes which in total make up the entire twelve notes of the Western scale. List has therefore pre-dated Schoenberg by some forty years, being the first composer to use a twelve-tone note row! Granted it does not necessarily follow Schoenberg’s strict definition of the term, but all 12 notes are there nevertheless, each sounding once only. The second movement Gretchen is all sweetness and light by comparison; a beautiful musical portrait of a gentle maiden. It lingers in the air long after the movement finishes, and you almost want it to last forever. Then the final movement Mephistopheles comes blasting in and starts throwing his weight around. Liszt cleverly refuses to give Meph his own theme, instead you hear mere distortions of the Faust and Gretchen themes. The whole symphony comes to a rousing choral climax after almost an hour and a half. (Get the Bernstein recording to hear it at its best!) Until the time of Mahler this was the longest and largest symphonic work ever written, as far as I am aware. As already mentioned, Liszt also wrote a considerable number of Symphonic Poems, and these must be taken into account in the development of the symphony as a whole as they are the first attempts at redefining the symphony in purely romantic terms. Gone is the four-movement structure, to be replaced with a single movement that develops organically from the start. There is much more of an attempt to make the music “tell a story” rather than remaining purely abstract. Other composers will take up the challenge of the symphonic poem in later years, notably Tchaikovsky and Sibelius. Over in France at this time, the symphonic baton is taken up by Gounod and Saint-Saëns. Gounod’s symphonies are nothing to shout about, and to be honest, neither are Saint-Saëns’s at this point. S-S was a child prodigy like Mozart, but unlike Mozart lived a long life yet produced relatively little of note during his 86 years on the planet. (Shame on him! Mind you, to be fair he had a hard life. Read his biography, it’s a real tear-jerker.) In 1853 he wrote his first symphony at the age of 18, and although quite nice and distinctly French, it remains rather lightweight. S-S wrote five symphonies in all, but the only one that really stands up is the one known as the 3rd (although it was actually his 5th), the so-called Organ Symphony. More on that later. So now we have, in the German corner, Franz List and his symphonic poems, with Wagner turning his Teutonic nose up at the whole symphonic business, and in the French corner a handful of Gallic composers flexing their muscles on the original Beethovenian model, but still apparently unsure as to what to do with it. Is there nobody else on the planet in the mid-1800’s willing to have a go? The English have been curiously silent (musically speaking) for a couple of centuries at this point, earning the title The Land Without Music, and for good reason. Probably too busy building an empire. Yes, that must be it. The Americans have domestic problems of their own, and the Eastern world is still a mystery. This precise point in time is probably the Symphony’s darkest decade. The world of Music is being usurped by Richard Wagner and his colossal operas, and legions of younger composers are falling under his spell. Still, it’s not all doom and gloom. Just around the corner are the saviours of the art form, in the form of Anton Bruckner (albeit one of the aforementioned Wagnerite legion) and the rise and rise of the Russian School starting with Borodin along with Czech contributions from DvoYák. But for the next 12 years or thereabouts, you ll just have to whistle the theme from the Valkyries, until Bruckner and DvoYák are ready with their respective firsts in 1865. From this point on I’ll continue in a more chronological style, rather than talking about a single composer at a time. Musical styles start changing and developing at an exponential rate from here on, and it would make more sense to see what’s happening in the musical world on a year-by-year basis. So, starting in 1865 we have the two composers I just mentioned about to cut their teeth on a symphony. Also, as the Romantic era progresses we find that interpretation becomes more and more crucial. Wherever possible, try to hear at least two or three different recordings of each of these works, and you’ll see what I mean. By the time we get to Mahler, interpretation is everything. A good conductor and orchestra can really make the work sing; a bad one can destroy it completely. But often there can be more than one interpretation of a piece. This is not necessarily a bad thing either, Mahler himself said that music should grow and adapt, not be stuck forever as flat symbols on a page. Anyway, enough of Mahler (I do keep bringing him up, don t I?), in 1865 he s still only a toddler& The Czech composer Antonín DvoYák starts out on a symphonic career in that year with The Bells of Zlonice  a work which was lost for decades and which DvoYák himself completely forgot about in later years. Apparently he insisted upon his death bed that he had written eight symphonies, and even when shown the manuscript of the one we now call his 1st, he didn t remember writing it. So what s it like? I would say it s about average for him, and hardly a world-shaker. It does have a distinctive  new sound though; the first true symphony from a Czech writer. DvoYák also refused to use proper bell sounds in the piece, which might strike you (sorry!) as odd given the title. I have often wondered what his reasoning was – it would have been easy to use tubular bells in the opening theme instead of mimicking them on other instruments as he did. Listen to it and decide for yourself. So, back to Bruckner; let’s see if he’s ready. No – not quite. To be honest, by 1865 he’s already written two symphonies, but he refers to them as “study” symphonies, and he absolutely refuses to show them to anybody. They’re known today as no.0 and no.00 (or even minus one if you can believe that.) But are they any good? Actually, yes. In fact I’d go so far as to say they’re better than some of his regular symphonies. Poor Bruckner was plagued by self-doubt, never sure of his own music and always altering it to try to accommodate advice from friends; in his earlier works he tended to leave things alone, and they are better for it. That’s not to say however that Bruckner’s “study” symphonies are great music; they are to my ears pleasant, but ultimately unfulfilling. In 1867 we have what is possibly the first Russian symphony: that of Alexander Borodin. Nothing remarkable, but it does have a distinct Russian flavour. From this point on, the Russians take the symphony in a new direction and make it wholly their own, and plenty of masterpieces will flow from this point on the globe in the future. For now though, Borodin is a pioneer, and makes a competent start in this musical idiom. Only one more completed symphony springs from his pen, with a third left unfinished, but he has made his mark. 1872, and we see another Russian take the stage, and this time he’s going to make a permanent impact upon it, to the point (to stretch a simile) of gouging out a colossal crater. Possibly the best known of all Russian composers, and one of the best-known of ALL composers is Pytor Ilych Tchaikovsky, certainly by virtue of general public knowledge of his works. Anyone in the Western World who does not know at least one Tchaikovsky tune must be by definition, stone deaf. Even if you never listen to any Classical music, you will have heard the theme from Swan Lake, or Romeo & Juliet, or the Sugar Plum Fairy from the Nutcracker, or any one of hundreds of other beautiful melodies he seemed to produce effortlessly. In the modern world it is impossible to avoid his music as it can be heard in TV adverts, elevators, mobile phone ring tones, ice-cream vans etc. etc. And yet the man himself was extremely insecure about himself and his music. In the year 1872 he was already 32, and a rapidly rising star when he penned his first symphony, known to us as no.2, the Little Russian, or at least the original version of it. He rewrote it extensively 7 years later. The Little Russian opens with a bang. Right from the start, you know this is not a typical Germanic style work. The first movement was (apart from the opening theme) completely changed in the revision, but in the original version we hear, in place of taut Teutonic development, a much more lyrical stance deployed with melodious themes interweaving throughout. This is Tchaikovsky’s way of doing things, and ultimately the Russian way, probably through his example. There are plenty of so-called music “experts” who say that Tchaikovsky’s symphonies sound like ballets, and that he couldn’t really write “true” symphonies. What they mean by that is that he didn’t follow the German way of doing things, but then why should he? He wasn’t German! What he did do (along with Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin, to give them their due) was to forge a symphonic style that was truly Russian. Every nation strives to find its own voice in its music, and little by little we will see other great nations take part in this global symphonic debate. But Tchaik didn’t just write Russian sounding symphonies, he wrote GOOD ones, and what’s more he wrote in HIS style. When you hear a Tchaikovsky symphony, you KNOW it’s Tchaikovsky. There is no mistaking his musical fingerprint, right from the start. This can be said of earlier composers, but none more so than Pytor Ilych at this point in time. Some early Beethoven works can be mistaken for Haydn, as Haydn can be for Mozart etc. But Tchaikovsky, never. Beethoven placed himself at the centre of his music; but Tchaikovsky made his music do all the talking for him. Another forward step has been taken in the development of music, and it’s distinctively HECCRQB. The next few years see Bruckner, DvoYák and Tchaikovsky write more symphonies, and in each case getting bolder and moving further down their respective chosen paths. Bruckner dedicates his 3rd, in 1873, to Wagner, and to me it sounds overblown, pompous and ultimately empty. It sounds like he s trying too hard; there s no substance behind the grandiloquent gestures. His 2nd is slightly less decadent, but still tends to drag on a bit at roughly an hour in length. Equally, DvoYák s 2nd and 3rd are forgettable floss. But then along comes Tchaikovsky’s “Winter Dreams” (now designated no.1) in 1874. It seems the Russians now have the upper hand. This is a lovely work and deserves to be heard more often, especially the icy but somehow warm 2nd movement. I have never been to St. Petersburg (Tchaikovsky’s home) but this piece allows me to imagine it on a frosty morning, as all mornings there undoubtedly are. Chalk up another triumph for Pytor Ilych. DvoYák s 4th appeared in the same year, and here we see a marked improvement in his technique. It is still decidedly Czech, and recognisably DvoYákian, but it is a symphony with  muscle . It seems to carve its way forward with pure intellectual will, and leaves the listener feeling satisfied that some kind of struggle has been won. (I should mention here that Antonín DvoYák was quite fastidious concerning the correct spelling of his name and use of all the accents therein. I believe it is important to ensure people’s names are spelled exactly the way they themselves wanted, and so I will honour his request here. Similarly with Schoenberg, who preferred that spelling over the original spelling of “Schönberg”. As you wish, sir. Tchaikovsky on the other hand poses a bit of a problem as the Russian spelling of his name is XFQRJDCRQB, which should really translate as “Chai-kov-ski”, but we’ll stick with the accepted Western spelling for conformity’s sake.) Tchaikovsky counters in the following year with his Polish symphony, which he based on Schumann s Rhenish with its five movement structure. Then DvoYák strikes back with his 5th, which unfortunately misses the mark. The less said about it, the better, really. In the same year we also hear from the Irish when Charles Villiers Stanford presents his first symphony. Mostly harmless. So where are the Germans? What’s happened to them? Well… It seems the Germans were keeping their biggest symphonic talent under wraps in the 1870’s, probably due to the overbearing influence of Wagner. Anyway, by 1876, and already at the advanced age of 43, into the ring weighing in at some 200 pounds steps the heavyweight composer Johannes Brahms. Brahms, it appears, hesitated to produce a symphony for years for some reason. He had written a great deal of excellent music by then, including his awesome concertos for piano and violin, but a Brahms symphony seemed to be one step too far into Beethoven territory for Brahms’s liking at first. He was already being compared (favourably) with the great Maestro, so naturally thought, “As soon as I write a symphony people will call it Beethoven’s 10th, no matter what I do.” (In fact, Beethoven HAD started a 10th symphony, but only got as far as the 1st movement and a few sketches for a scherzo.) Anyway, eventually Brahms bit the bullet in 1876 and published his first symphony – and straight away it was hailed as Beethoven’s 10th. Doh! Well, to be fair, Brahms had introduced a theme in the finale that was quite similar to the “Ode to Joy” theme, so he only had himself to blame. However, there were no choruses, choirs or vocal soloists in his offering, just 50 or so minutes of pure orchestral music, and good solid German music at that. Vorsprung Durch Musik, as they might say. Now he’d taken the plunge, it wasn’t long before another Brahms four wheel drive model came roaring off the production line. No.2 debuted in 1877 and was very much the equal of the 1st, if not superior. Now he was on a roll; another, smaller but perfectly formed 3rd arrived just 6 years later – but I’m getting ahead of myself. Wind back to 1878, and hear a sneak preview of Tchaikovsky’s answer to Beethoven’s 5th – his explosive 4th. In Beethoven’s wild opus, it is said that Fate comes knocking on the door. Well, in Tchaikovsky’s 4th he literally kicks if off its hinges. A trumpet call opens the proceedings, announcing the arrival of the unwelcome guest. All doom and gloom, interspersed with wild cries of injustice dominate the massive first movement. Why me? Leave me alone! It’s all too much! The mood is stormy and oppressive throughout, ending with a menacing flourish that leaves you exhausted but unsatisfied. You have been weighed in the balance, and found wanting. But this is only the beginning of the symphony. It all works out right in the end, trust me. Tchaikovsky is taking us on a journey into the dark recesses of his tortured soul. That may sound pretentious, but it does sum up the mood quite succinctly. The second movement is a sorrowful lament that offers no hope, and eventually breaks up into different keys played on successive woodwind instruments, till it dies away altogether. Then in the next movement, a beautiful surprise! The scherzo movement is played on pizzicato (plucked) strings alone, picking out an uplifting tune that, though not quite joyous is certainly positive, providing a much needed light at the end of the tunnel. The trio section is played on woodwind with a jaunty little piccolo solo, and then the strings (still plucked) join in with the woodwind and have a little chuckle together, as if surreptitiously sharing a dirty joke. Things are brightening up, like the long-term prisoner doing a little dance in his cell on the final day of his incarceration. Then suddenly the finale blasts out with a crash of cymbals and a brash confident tune that would put a smile on the face of a high court judge. It’s a massive celebration complete with jugglers and dancing elephants in the brilliant sunshine. It leaps and bounds over all and sundry like a loopy labrador trying to lick the face of everyone in the room. Then, just as it seems nothing could ever spoil this outburst of pure joy… Bam! Fate appears like Banquo’s Ghost, standing right in front of the procession signalling: STOP. The orchestra comes to a screeching halt as the Fate motif blares out like a police siren at the scene of a grotesque accident. Everything goes deathly quiet… but Fate has played his final hand after all, and slinks off defeated. Nevertheless, that musical moment is a pure heart-stopper, like seeing a pile of bricks fall off the lorry in front of you on the motorway! After that, the carnival checks itself for any damage and then tentatively resumes its festivities, building up speed and courage again until it is even more delirious than before; leaping up in semitones with sheer dizzy recklessness, and the symphony ends in a tumultuous shout of sheer unadulterated joy that borders on hysteria. (Think I’m exaggerating? Go and see a live performance, played by a good orchestra. It’ll knock your socks off!) Winding on to 1882, and we finally come to an English symphony! The man responsible was Charles Hubert Parry. Again, mostly harmless. We are going to have to wait another 26 years before we get to a true English work of this genre, and we all know whom that’s going to be from. (To be fair, there was an earlier English symphonist called Potter, but he’s even less well known than Parry. If I find out anything about him I’ll let you know. Neither of them had the first name of Harry by the way.) Now let’s move on to 1884, pausing briefly to give a passing nod at Bruckner’s 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th symphonies, and DvoYák s 6th and 7th. They are mounting up, aren t they? It has been said (rather unkindly) of Bruckner that he wrote the same symphony nine times, and I m inclined to agree with that. To me they are quite listenable, but I always get the feeling that I could be spending my time listening to something more interesting. You know where you are with Bruckner, and you know where the music is going at all times, and it never goes anywhere really exciting, despite all the bombast and bluster it conjures up. Ah well. Then there s DvoYák  less predictable, more entertaining, but still lacking something in most cases. The 6th I can take or leave. His 7th however is a marked improvement. It is definitely brown in colour. The Brown symphony, that s how I think of it. A golden brown, like a nicely brewed cup of tea. Whereas the Tchaik 4 that I have just meticulously examined would be a deep, deep starless black up until the final movement, when it bursts into glorious Technicolor. Talking of musical colours, we now get to the first symphonic stirrings of a man afflicted (or should that be blessed?) with synasthaesia; a condition which merges sound and colour, and sometimes other senses in the brain so that they actually do “see” music as colour. There have been several composers with this condition, notably Scriabin and Arthur Bliss, but the man we’re concerned with here is Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who in 1884 published his first symphony. Now, RK’s three symphonies are not too well known, and to my ears they are competent but not 1st class material. And this is odd, since RK is known to have been a 1st class composer. I believe that in actual fact, symphonies were not really his “thing” and he just didn’t try hard enough in the genre. His other great works are truly great; consider his symphonic opus Scheherazade which could almost be considered a symphony in its own right (Or is it a violin concerto? More on this amazing piece later), and the magnificent Capriccio Espagnol (said to be the best Spanish music ever composed that was NOT written by a Frenchman! Work that one out!) Never mind, I will mention his 1st symphony anyway. There, I’ve mentioned it. Next. Next up: 1885, and Tchaikovsky’s evocative Manfred symphony. Tchaik didn’t give this one a number, but it comes between nos. 4 & 5, so consider it no. 4½. After writing the 4th Tchaikovsky moved away from symphonies for a good ten years, and concentrated on other forms of music. However, this one seems to have leaked out of his pen in the meantime and does tend to get overlooked, simply because of the fact that it doesn’t have a number. It is basically a “programme” symphony in the same vein as Berlioz’s Harold in Italy, in that it tries to tell the story of Byron’s hero Manfred. Now I have never read Byron’s Manfred (or Harold In Italy for that matter) but I shouldn’t have to know who Manfred is to enjoy the symphony. And enjoy it I do. It is Tchaikovsky’s longest symphony, lasting nearly an hour, and includes an organ in the final movement at a crucial point in the musical story which really gives it some oomph. In the same year, Brahms published his 4th and final symphony, and it’s another chunky 50 minutes of serious Teutonic musical discourse. It’s no better or worse than the preceding three, and the collection as a whole makes up a fearsome four course symphonic banquet – if you can manage all four in one sitting that is. Brahms apparently admitted he couldn’t write “light” music, and he was right. The following year (1886) heralds a masterpiece from France, and about time! Charles Camille Saint-Saëns wheels out his impressive Organ symphony (known as no.3 although it is actually his 5th.) It’s big, it’s noisy, it’s pretentious through and through – and I love it! Only a Frenchman could write music like this, and get away with it. 1886 also sees the 2nd offering from Rimsky-Korsakov. It’s actually the one we now know as no.3 in C, and it is interesting for one specific reason. The scherzo movement is in a rapid 5/4 time – the first time a 5/4 beat has ever been used in Western music, as far as I know. Tchaikovsky liked the idea so much he used it in his own 6th symphony, but in a slower “broken waltz” fashion. Personally, I think Rimsky used it to much better effect here though. The symphony as a whole is the best of Rimsky’s three and quite satisfying. Another two years fly by, and we now hear a symphony from a Belgian. (It’s actually debatable whether he was Belgian or French, but does that really matter? It’s the music that’s important.) It’s as introspective as Saint-Saëns’ offering was “extrospective”, and it is the single symphony – indeed almost the only major work – from Cesar Franck. Written when Franck was well into his 60’s (which must be a record age for a 1st symphony), dark and brooding almost throughout, it takes a while to grow on you. Franck uses a motto theme of his own, and in this case it’s a three-note motif, which sounds like it’s asking a question: “Must it be?” or “Is this it?” There are similarities with some of Dvorak’s “brown” symphonies here. There are only three movements, and by the time we get to the finale “Must it be?” has changed to “Yes, it must be. Deal with it.” No specific change of mood though, just a stern resignation and indifferent acceptance; So that’s the way it is then. Ho hum. OK, fine. Sorry I asked. In the same year as Franck’s moody masterpiece, Tchaikovsky gives us his 5th, and this is a world away from either his 4th or the Manfred. Intensely romantic and tinged with sadness, it’s one of my all-time favourites. Fate is knocking again, but this time he’s a bit more polite about it. Maybe this time he’s just selling home insurance. Tchaikovsky himself had serious doubts about the whole symphony almost as soon as he had finished it, but he had no real cause to; it’s a sublime work. The “Fate” theme re-occurs in each of the four movements; in the first mildly threatening, in the 2nd it is more of a lament, in the 3rd it becomes a slow waltz, and only in the finale does it really bear its teeth, but turns eventually into a majestic triumphant march. The main theme of the 2nd movement is one of the best Tchaikovsky ever wrote; it’s searingly beautiful and stays with you long after the whole work has come to a resounding close. I remember my grandfather (who was a mean pianist in his time) playing along to his LP of this movement, and when the record finished he continued improvising on the theme for a further half an hour. I only wish I could have recorded it, the theme is now forever associated with him in my mind. THE LATE ROMANTICS –BRUCKNER, MAHLER, RACHMANINOV In passing it is also worth pointing out that in this symphony the ancient Minuet has undergone another transformation; in Haydn’s hands it became a Minuet with Trio, then Beethoven altered it to a “Scherzo” (still in triple time but faster and less “aristocratic”), now in Tchaik’s hands it has become a fully fledged laid-back waltz. Oh well, these Russians, they love to change things… A-one two three, one two three… Moving on just one more year; we are now in 1889, and a new voice is about to be heard. The owner of this “new sound” is still only 29 at this point, and so far has published little of note – at least, nothing that made any big impression at the time. All this is about to change however, with the first of his attempts. The symphony is called “Titan”, and the composer’s name is Gustav Mahler (finally!). During his lifetime Mahler was much better known as a conductor, but not because his music was inferior in any way. In fact if he had never composed a note of music, he would still be known to us as one of the greatest conductors of all time. But the music that he did write has cast a long shadow over practically all music that has followed it, and if you think I’m exaggerating consider this: In his book on C20th music Norman Lebrecht said that “Of the major composers of the 20th Century, only Stravinsky and Debussy could claim to be wholly immune to Mahlerian innovations” – and I agree wholeheartedly with this appraisal. Leonard Bernstein famously said of him; “The C20th is the century of Death, and Mahler was its musical prophet”. I don’t entirely agree with this however, but I understand why Bernstein would think so. Bernstein was Jewish, and so was Mahler. Bernstein rescued Mahler’s music from the dustbin of history where it had been thrown by the Nazis, polished it and held it up for the world to see. Mahler said “My time will come”, and Bernstein fulfilled his prophecy with honours. Anyway, enough of the heavy philosophy; what of his first Symphony? It would not be much of an exaggeration to claim that Mahler’s 1st symphony was to the C20th as Beethoven’s Eroica was to the 19th – except for the fact that it didn’t make as much of an impression at first. But in hindsight, we can see that it is the case. If you have been following the development of the symphony with me here, and playing the pieces in turn, you should now be putting your CD of the Titan into your CD player and pressing “Play”. If you haven’t, imagine doing it anyway. You wait for the first bars to begin thundering out of your speakers like most C19th symphonies start, but they don’t. Is it playing? You can’t hear anything. Then you hear it – a thin high string sound, like a cold sunrise with high stratospheric clouds in a pale blue sky. This isn’t how symphonies are supposed to start! It barely sounds like an orchestra at all. There is no theme, nothing to hold on to, just this thin wispy sound like Nature breathing. Then come the bird-calls. But this isn’t Beethoven’s warm cosy Pastoral music, it’s cold and earthy, but at the same time eerily beautiful. Primeval dawn; a sound from a hundred million years ago. There is a wonderful sense that something amazing is about to happen – and sure enough, it does! The music gradually, so gradually starts to form as you listen, coalescing into more familiar shapes, till eventually it takes the shape of a melody – and what a melody! No three or four-note motif that you might expect from a Viennese composer (as Mahler was), but a lilting, soaring tune that takes your breath away. It breathes life into everything it touches like some magical musical fairy, and soon the whole orchestra is dancing and laughing along with it. And who said Mahler’s music is depressing? But there is more… much, much more in this symphony that lasts nearly a whole hour. I could write a complete chapter on this one work alone, but I’ll leave it for now. Go to section 8 for more details on this incredible, awe-inspiring masterpiece. As I said in my introduction, if this was his first, what on earth are the other 8 like? (not forgetting the unfinished 10th, which I’ll come to eventually.) Well, all in good time. Remember – it’s still only 1889. The musical world at that time simply wasn’t ready for Mahler, and it can be argued convincingly that it still wasn’t ready until the 1960’s – 50 years after his death. To quote Lebrecht again on Mahler; “More than just a musician, he was a monumental force in the 20th Century, comparable to Einstein, Freud and Lenin.” Quite. So what else was happening in the musical world in 1889? Well, our old friend DvoYák is up to his 8th now (although he personally thinks of it as his 7th, and will for a long time after his death be known as the 4th), and it s a marked improvement on his previous work. A light sunny piece with some gorgeous tunes, its only failing is that it s over just when you are really getting into it  half an hour flies by in minutes when I hear this one. DvoYák achieves what Brahms never managed to do; smile! I should also mention here that the late 1880 s are important for another reason associated with music, and not simply a new piece or new method of writing. No, the Man of the Moment isn’t even a musician, but an inventor – and what he has just invented will change music forever. Of course, Thomas Alva Edison doesn’t even realise himself what the implications of his “Graphophone” will be, but has to be informed by someone who can imagine all too clearly. One of the very first recordings ever made on Edison’s invention is that of Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame) speaking into a primitive cylinder player in 1888. He says quite clearly; “I am astonished and somewhat terrified. Astonished at the wonderful power you have developed; and terrified at the thought that so much hideous, bad music may be put on record forever.” Indeed. However, every invention is a double-edged sword, and sound recording is no exception. Consider that thanks to Edison you can now hear more music in a month than Mozart could have heard in his whole life! Most composers before the 1950’s never heard the majority of their own music in their lifetimes, and yet we can now casually ingest any music from any time in history going back a thousand years, and from any culture in the world. I can carry hundreds of hours of music in my pocket, and my entire collection of tens of thousands of hours’ worth in a small bag. Using the Internet I can find just about any piece of music in minutes, download and listen to it quicker than it was recorded, which negates the need of building up a collection in the first place. Unfortunately, Sullivan was quite right, we also have to endure a colossal amount of trash, and most people seem to accept what is thrown at them by the music industry without question. It is up to us to sort the wheat from the chaff, and use some sort of judgement as to what merits our attention. Think about it. So now we jump ahead a few years to 1892. Bruckner has finally finished tinkering with the finer details of his 8th symphony (trying to accommodate all his friends’ suggestions as usual), and is starting on his 9th, which he will unfortunately not live to complete. The 8th is a colossal work, and not for the impatient amongst us. It is probably his best work, and representative of his entire output. In fact, you can junk all his other symphonies, and just keep this one; it says it all really. Bruckner was a devout Catholic, and this work is his dedication to God. I wonder what God thought of it? “Nice work Ant, but a bit long-winded. Did you really mean to have the poor cymbal player wait for over an hour just to play his one big “crash”? The poor guy’s a nervous wreck now- he missed his cue and came in half a beat too late!” In this year we also hear a fine work by a Dane - one Carl Nielsen. His first is a highly competent, rugged work of the type you might expect from a Scandinavian composer. But he will do much better in later years. Keep an eye on him. 1892 also sees the first performance of Mahler’s “sequel” to his Titanic Titan, and this one’s a real Monster with a capital M. I could go so far as to claim it is the Greatest Symphony Ever Written, and maybe even the Greatest piece of music ever written. Others might say it is the biggest, fattest, most pretentious load of claptrap ever conceived, but then everybody’s entitled to their opinion. Pretentious it may be, but only if you have totally missed the point Mahler was attempting to make here. I am of course referring to his Resurrection Symphony. Most of Mahler’s music is timeless. Fashions come and go, but Mahler’s music will always be popular, I believe. However, the Resurrection could only have been written in the late C19th. It is a huge, stormy, heavily Romantic work that successfully sums up and closes the book on the entire Romantic Period of music. This is the Sistine Chapel of Music. Mahler’s canvas is gigantic; he is attempting here to portray nothing less than the Apocalypse and the Second Coming of Christ. Gosh. If you go to see a performance of this incredible musical experience live, and it doesn’t touch your soul, then you have no business reading this book. The millionaire businessman Gilbert Kaplan was taken to see it one night by his friends. At the time he knew very little about music, but after hearing the Resurrection he was so overwhelmed by it that he took to studying it in detail with the ultimate aim to conduct it himself. And he did – what’s more his recording of the symphony is now widely recognised as the “definitive” version. Kaplan took the Resurrection to his heart and made it his own. Because of this one work, he became an internationally recognised conductor – and the only piece he conducts is Mahler’s Resurrection. Now there’s a fan! Can any other piece of music inspire anyone to that extent? I don’t know of any. I won’t go into details on it just yet. However I’ll say this much: it lasts 80-90 minutes, and in that hour and a half expect to hear – and experience – sorrow, pain, grief, anger, humility, rejection, acceptance and finally unbridled joy and passion. It will drag you into the pit of Hell, then lift you joyously to Heaven. If you’re not moved by this music, you’re either deaf or dead. If you can, get a recording by Leonard Bernstein or Simon Rattle, or of course Gilbert Kaplan. AVOID Sinopoli at all costs! This music deserves the best interpretation and the best quality recording, and don’t be mean with the volume. Give the neighbours advance warning, and crank the volume up! The music goes from deathly quiet to raucously noisy, but it’s MEANT to. Mahler knows what he’s doing, so listen to it in the manner he intended. Failing all that, go to a live concert. Oh – and avoid Classic FM too - they “squash” the sound and take all the dynamics out of it, which to me is a horrendous musical crime. What’s the point of having an orchestra which can play any volume from fff to ppp (or pppppp according to Tchaikovsky) – when Classic FM play absolutely everything mf (mezzoforte)? Mahler shows us in this work what dynamic range really means; there are two chords in the 1st movement that are said to be the loudest in all orchestral music – and in the finale there is a muted off-stage horn which is possibly the quietest. Compressing all this into a “normalised” medium volume is a big no-no. Shame on you, CFM! Now we come to 1893, and a couple of highly regarded symphonies from respectively, Tchaikovsky and DvoYák. Both are their last offerings in the genre, and for Tchaikovsky it is his last major work. Within a week of the first performance of his  Pathetique or 6th symphony, he is dead. Some say he wrote his own epitaph in the finale, and it certainly is unusual having the slow movement last. In fact I believe it was only ever done once before, and that was 120 years ago in Haydn’s “Farewell”. But Haydn did it for a joke. Tchaikovsky was deadly serious. The story is well known, that he was “persuaded” by his friends to poison himself to avoid a scandal involving himself and a member of the Russian aristocracy. Some friends. Tchaikovsky was only 51. He might have lived 20 or 30 more years and given us many more unimaginable gifts of his wonderful music. He might have lived long enough to meet Stravinsky and Debussy, but he wasn’t allowed to. We are all the losers in this pathetic crime. No matter, what we have from him is priceless as it is. Tchaikovsky is dead; long live Tchaikovsky! Some other interesting points to make about his final symphony; as I mentioned earlier, there is indeed a passage in the 1st mvt marked pppppp – the cor anglais solo just before the fff interjection from the brass, which puts Haydn’s Surprise in the shade. Haydn probably made a few old ladies jump; Tchaikovsky means to give us all cardiac arrest! (Mahler did something similar in his 1st symphony – the opening of the final movement still jolts me out of my seat and I’m expecting it.) The 5/4 waltz in the 2nd mvt I’ve already mentioned – followed by a rousing march which for me is the best part of the whole work. Then we are left with the tragic finale, with its sad descending theme played on the strings. But hold on – listen to those strings a bit more closely. They are divided into two sections, and if you listen to each section individually (which can be done on some CDs if the string sections have been separated stereophonically), you will hear not the expected descending phrase, but two totally different disjointed themes! It’s only when the two are combined that we “hear” that famous tune. It’s a kind of aural illusion which is completely missed by 99% of listeners to the piece. Take a look at the sheet music for the piece or ask a string player who knows it if you don’t believe me. In fact, when listening to the Tchaik 6 it strikes me that this particular symphony disregards nearly all of the standard symphonic “rules” – true it has four movements, but the order is highly unconventional. There is no triple-time movement, no development of themes, no “big” finale. At the time of writing it must have been quite an innovative work. As for DvoYák (cut & paste those accents!), in the year of Tchaik s demise he presented us with his New World, possibly one of the best known symphonies ever written. D was to live another 11 years afterwards, but his symphonic catalogue ends here. And so 1896 rolls around, and political correctness obliges me to mention a symphony by a woman – Amy Beach by name. Her Gaelic symphony appeared in this year, and sounds quite competant if not world-shattering. Female composers are still rare in the 21st century so far, but gaining ground. In the 19th though they were unheard of. Composition has simply never been thought of as a woman’s vocation, and the attitude is still with us today. In the same year we are introduced to Bruckner’s final opus – his famous incomplete 9th. If he hadn’t spent so much time altering his earlier works he might have managed to finish this piece – but then maybe it’s fine as it is. The three movements that make it up still add up to roughly an hour of colossal Brucknerian sound, and personally I like the way it ends with the slow movement. No more needed to be said. Adieu, Anton. The following year brings us a new symphony and a new composer on the scene – the fiercely Russian Sergei Rachmaninov. His 1st is a rough-hewn brick of a piece with a sturdy slavic sound, but it would be unwise to judge his merit on it – his style changed drastically after the century flipped over and he himself “flipped” into a new, more relaxed but still highly expressive style that followed a nervous breakdown and a few sessions on a psychiatrist’s couch. This work is a perfect example of C19th Rachmaninov, heavily influenced as he was by Tchaikovsky at the time. (He had actually written an earlier symphony, nowadays called the “Youth” symphony. Only about 10-12 minutes in length and comprising just a single movement, it sounds even more like second-hand Tchaikovsky, to the extent of plagiarising whole passages of Tchaik’s 4th and rearranging them out of context. Well, Rachmaninov was young at the time and had a lot to learn – which he did. He more than made up for this poor teenage attempt in his later masterpieces.) 1898 brings us another new champion of the symphony, and again he is a composer who hasn’t quite found his feet yet. This one though is an American. A 19th Century American symphony? Surely you cannot be serious? Charles Ives was – at least he was at this time. I’m not sure whether later on in his career he was pulling our collective legs a bit – wait till you hear his 4th… But what’s our old friend Mahler doing at this time? Certainly not resting on his laurels – in this year he trundles out a real pantechnicon of a symphony, with all the extras – organ, choir, soloists, bells, whistles – well okay, not whistles, but it did inspire a contemporary cartoonist to point out that he had left out the car horn! His 3rd is generally thought to be the longest symphony ever written, lasting a whopping hour and a half at the very least, and comprising six movements; the first alone weighing in at around 35 minutes. So what is it about, and more importantly, is it any good? I’ll go over it in detail later, but for now I’ll just say that it’s not my favourite of his works, and it takes a good orchestra and conductor to get the best out of it, but it is still certainly worth a listen if you can sit still that long. Makes you wonder what he’s going to do to top that… The following year introduces us to another new symphonic heavyweight – the 20th Century is just around the corner and things are gearing up for a real musical battle, and in the Blue corner we now have the Finnish composer Jean Johann Julius Sibelius. Sibelius saw himself as the total antithesis to Mahler’s “overblown” romantic notion of music, as revealed in their own words; Mahler: “A symphony must contain the whole world” vs. Sibelius: “At my concerts I serve pure cold water.” Sibelius’s 1st certainly offers a cool refreshing alternative, but is it possible to enjoy both? Of course it is! That’s what music is all about to me; contrasts and moods, different styles and sounds. A banquet wouldn’t be very appetising if all the food tasted the same. So feast on a Mahlerian dish piled high with spices, then wash it down with a long cool scandanavian drink of icy Sibelian water. Lovely! So now we hit 1900, and things in the music world are changing. Most of the old  Romantic composers are now dead (Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Bruckner) or inactive/retired (DvoYák, who left this world in 1904, and Rimsky who held out until 1908) and a new coterie of composers is flexing its muscles to ascertain what the C20th Sound will be. At this point, nobody is really sure – the old Western harmonic scale seems to have been taken apart and put together in every possible way. Harmonies have been stretched and pulled so far that in some pieces they are at breaking point, and tax the patience of some audiences. What else can be done with just 12 notes of the traditional Western scale? We shall see. At the turn of the century, Mahler was probably the man who it could be argued was best placed to judge the scene, and responded with his dainty 4th, a drastic pull back from the excesses of his previous work. Still roughly an hour in length, but much more delicately scored with a lighter feel to the sound, including a mock-Viennese waltz for a 2nd mvt involving a devilish sounding violin solo, and a highly unusual finale which introduced a female soloist who is instructed to sing “like a child describing the joys of Heaven”. There is also no big heavy rousing conclusion; the music drops away unexpectedly and finishes with a solo harp playing a repeating low, almost inaudible note. Audiences at the time didn’t know what to make of this, and weren’t even sure the piece had ended. All the same, it is a wonderful work, and one of my all-time favourites. If there is any one piece that