Talk:Symphony

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Symphony article.
Article policies
Symphony is within the scope of WikiProject Classical music, which aims to improve, expand, cleanup, and maintain all articles related to classical music, that aren't covered by other classical music related projects. Please read the guidelines for writing and maintaining articles. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details.
This article is supported by the Compositions task force.

Contents

[edit] Miscellaneous

I think that the list of composers is very detailed in some cases, while in others it doesn't even provide the time period. Definite cleanup needed. Also, I dont think there are enough clips - I mean, beethoven was hardly the only great symphonic composer. I've completely rewritten the 1911 stuff that was here - the old article is in the history here should anybody want to use it as a source. What I've written needs a lot of work and expansion, but I think it's better than what we had before. --Camembert

Does this mean you are for or against calling Prokoviev a Soviet composer, or are you adopting a neutral stance? What about calling him a Russian composer, or even a Ukranian composer? Gene Ward Smith

Gene, it doesn't mean anything to do with Prokofiev - I wrote that months and months ago, before you put your Prokofiev query there. There's a sort of convention at the 'pedia to add new questions to the bottom of the page (in part to avoid confusion like this) - that's where I've moved your question. --Camembert

I really doubt this (from the list of symphonists):

  • Giuseppe Torelli, Italian composer of the Sinfonia à 4, the first real symphony

I doubt very much that we can say who the composer of the "first real symphony" is - the form sort of evolved, there's no one moment you can point to and say "there, that's the beginning of the symphony". But in any case, I don't think that Torelli wrote anything that could really be called a symphony - I don't know what this "Sinfonia à 4" is (I think Torelli actually wrote several pieces with that title), but my guess is that it's either a ripieno concerto (see article for an explanation) or a sonata of some sort. I'm going to leave it in the article for now, though, while I can get to some books. --Camembert

Torelli was indeed the composer of the first actual symphonies, although he made little distinction over sinfonia/concerti grossi/sonata. I got the information from The Encyclopedia of Classical Music, which, on page 133, reads:

Early symphonies: >Torelli's symphonies/concerti/sonatas (he was inconsistent over terminology) include possibly the first truly symphonic piece, the Sinfonia à 4 (Symphony of Fours), G33, for two orchestras totalling four oboes and four trumpets, with bassoon, trombone, timpani, strings, and two organs. Such splendour was rare before 1700.

Then it goes on to list other early symphonies including Vivaldi 's Concerto ripieno in B-flat, RV163 and Concerto ripieno on D minor, RV127, William Boyce's three-movement overture to Peleus and Thetis, Lotelli's six Indroduzioni teatrale for strings in 1735, and Wilhelm Friederich Bach's strange Symphony in F, F67, a four-movement suite in all but name.

I believe that is enough evidence, although you can see for youself, as the book costs US$16.07 in Amazon.com and is worth the price. -- Gerhard

Thanks very much for the citation. However, I think virtually all music scholars would disagree with that book about what constitutes a symphony. For example, they would say that Vivaldi's concerti ripieno (a type of piece also written by Torelli, incidentally, and which I've mentioned in the article) are not symphonies, because they use the ritornello form of the concerto, rather than binary form or sonata form. They'd also say that Boyce's overture to Peleus and Thetis is not a symphony, because a symphony, by definition, is not part of some larger work - in fact, just about the only thing that distinguishes the Italian overture (which is what the Boyce piece is) from the early symphony, is that the former was written as an introduction to a larger piece (in this case a masque), while the latter was a stand-alone work designed to be performed in a concert. (Incidentally, I think we've got to be careful with terminology here as well: just because something is "symphonic" doesn't mean it's a symphony.)
Anyway, as I say, I'm not going to touch the Torelli entry in the list here until I can get back to some books - I did check in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians before I wrote this article to make sure I wasn't missing out anything obvious or saying anything silly, and the only reference I saw in the symphony article to Torelli was about his ripieno concerti. I may have missed something, however (I didn't read the whole article, as it's rather long), and as I say, I will check there again, and I'll look in some other sources too. --Camembert

I went to the books and made notes, but I'm not going to do anything to the article for a while - I'm fed up with it just at the minute, I'll give it a week or so (this shouldn't stop other people editing it in the meantime, of course). But in brief: no books I looked at considered Torelli to be a composer of symphonies - the symphony is really a Classical form by definition, so while Baroque composers might have written concerti or suites or whatever that resemble symphonies, they're not regarded as being part of the symphonic tradition. I'll try to clarify things when I have another go at the article. --Camembert

Prokoviev was born in the Ukraine long before there was a Soviet Union, and spent much of his creative either before or outside of the USSR. Why is he a "Soviet composer"? Gene Ward Smith

I called him Soviet because the USSR was in existence for the half of his life that he did most of his notable work, and because, as far as I know, he wasn't a citizen of any other country during that time. It's not a big deal, though - if you want to change it to Ukrainian or Russian, then I for one don't mind. --Camembert

In India, people often used to tell Ilayaraaja did compose symphony, but couldn't find his name in the article and list. Could someone clarify this? TIA --Rrjanbiah 09:02, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hi Rrjanbiah, if you Google "Ilayaraaja symphony" you certainly do get results--just give it a try. Since Ilayaraaja has indeed composed a symphony, I suggest you revise the list of Symphony composers. The current Ilayaraaja article says he's only working on a symphony, so it would be worth updating it as well. Opus33 16:57, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

<Rrjanbiah adds a line for Ilayaraaja.>

Hi Rrjanbiah, I changed the characterization of Ilayaraaja to "eminent Indian film composer", partly because other Asians have in fact composed symphonies before, but also because I think this is a better tribute to the composer. That is, it's more important (to me at least) that Ilayaraaja has composed music that is greatly admired than that (like the majority of all humanity!) he is Asian. I hope this is ok. Cheers, Opus33 15:22, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you. But the following ideas/myths(?)/unverified info are *much* prevalent here:

  • Symphony is much closed to Asians and non-white (racial notion)
  • Symphony is by and for elites
  • Symphony accepts only genius (that's why they accepted Ilayaraaja)
  • No Asians/Indians have composed symphony except Ilayaraaja
  • No one can compose symphony except Ilayaraaja from Asia. No one will be allowed to do so. (Similar ideas...)

And moreover, if he is been credited, it is de facto to add "he is the first Asian to compose...". --Rrjanbiah 08:30, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That depends on when he wrote it, (1993 according to a webpage,) since for example Yun Isang wrote five over his career. Then there's Ikebe, and others. Schissel 00:11, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Cleanup

I put a cleanup tag on this article. It's really cobbled together and doesn't flow well at all. A good example of the problem is that in both 19th and 20th century sections it mentions the French composers of organ symphonies as if they weren't referenced before. There's some other issues too (including this mess of a talk page...) ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 22:55, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

No kidding! It's a total mess. Should the article really start with characteristics? Why not start with a definition. The article reeks of too many cooks, no overall plan nor structure. It's awful. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.156.234.24 (talk) 16:07, 22 October 2007 (UTC)


To the author of Cleanup: are you the pedant who plastered Citation needed all over this? Look, most countries in the world have music schools (Saudi Arabia maybe the only exception), and in most such schools the development of music in Europe is studied, because there a mechanism for writing music down on paper was devised, so music developed into very sophisticated [citation needed?] forms.

The upshot is that there are literally hundreds of millions of people who would understand (not know, UNDERSTAND) a statement such as "Beethoven developed and expanded the symphony into a form which lasted a century". You would insist on a Citation for this. And you'd also look an idiot to hundreds of millions. So are you going to delete this edit? Edetic (talk) 10:00, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Changes

Hallo,I'm verry intressted in the Changes that happend in the different registers of the orchestra in the time between Mozart and Strauss.For example: some Instruments diappeared,others arrived and even others changed pitch and tuning (trumpets) and I keep thinking about the ideas behind it.Verry grateful for any answer. 85.3.53.193 14:00, 13 February 2007 (UTC) MICHAEL NEUMANN 02 13 07

Check the Wikipedia article "Orchestra", where there some information on this. Although the present article does mention the informal usage of the word "symphony" as a synonym for "symphony (or symphonic) orchestra", it is primarily about the musical form.--Jerome Kohl 19:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thank you,Jerome I did and it answers many questions,but brings up others as well. Greatings, Michael. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.3.152.147 (talk) 14:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] New child article for the list

I went ahead and spun off the long list of symphonies into List of symphony composers, as it was overtaking the mainspace of the article. I know it looks kinda bad at the moment, so feel free to help clean things up. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 12:25, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent trim

I removed the "characteristics" section from the article. It was redundant with much of the later discussion.

I removed some of the discussion too. The article implicitly idealised the development of the symphony in terms of a concerted effort to realise an implicit beautiful, perfect, Platonic symphonic (four-movement) form, which became fully-formed some time in the eighteenth century thanks to Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven. But "symphonic form" as presented here is an analytical convenience that was abstracted from extant works by later theoreticians.

The article was full of composers implicitly or explicitly "setting new standards". But when composers wrote symphonies, they didn't enter some form of competition to "develop the form" or "set standards". Each symphony can be taken on its own terms rather than being measured by its predecessors.

There were other generalisations that didn't stand up to scrutiny. For instance, "symphonies grew in length" completely ignores a whole swathe of symphonies including those by Sibelius, and this development (if it was a coherent conscious development) didn't "finish with Mahler" (Brian's Gothic?).

I removed much of the etymological discussion: I retained some as helpful background, but most of it was completely off-topic for this article. Perhaps the word itself is notable enough to warrant an article? Or does this content have a place at wikt:symphony? --RobertG ♬ talk 13:17, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Good for you, RobertG, particularly your edits regarding symphony-as-form. I have long believed that this article has overemphasized the reductive narratives concerning the transformation of pieces called symphonies over time, at the expense of genre. The frustration that arises from reading these generalizations goes without saying. Furthermore, the glaring absence of discussions about why certain trends in symphonic compositions might have taken place is a real head-scratcher; certainly there is enough secondary literature out there to flesh this out without controversy. Just some thoughts. Dunkelweizen 13:58, 12 November 2007 (UTC)