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Oct 20, 2021 · 🎵 Buy the album on the Official Halidon Music Store: https://bit.ly/3jh5BkT🎧 Listen to our playlist on Spotify: http://bit.ly/TheBestOfClassicalMusic💿 Ord...
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- Beethoven – Symphony No. 3 (1803) A trailblazing, mammoth masterpiece, glorifying the life of a great heroic figure. It had to be the Eroica. From those first two electrifying orchestral chords to the final victorious timpani flourishes it never puts a toe wrong.
- Beethoven – Symphony No. 9 (1824) The symphonic game-changer which has both terrified and inspired composers ever since. Had audiences in 1824 heard anything more elemental than Beethoven’s Ninth’s opening bars?
- Mozart – Symphony No. 41 (1788) A triumph of structure, crowned with one of music’s most dazzling fugal finales. The miracle of the work is its immense design, with a mixture of celebratory fanfares, cascading scales and yearning figures.
- Mahler – Symphony No. 9 (1909) An epic work from the dying embers of the Austro-German Romantic tradition. Scored for vast orchestral forces – huge woodwind and brass, with a percussion section that includes timpani, bass drum, side drum, triangle, cymbals, tam-tam, glockenspiel and three deep bells – the most striking thing about its soundworld is Mahler’s exquisite handling of sonorities.
Enjoy a compilation of symphonies by Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and more. This video is from Halidon Music, an Italian record label that offers classical and instrumental music.
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Jul 1, 2020 · The Greatest Classical Symphonies. Beethoven - Symphony No. 9 "Choral" (Orquesta Reino de Aragón) by HALIDONMUSIC. Baroque Music for Studying & Brain Power. 🎵 Buy the MP3 album on the Official...
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- Overview
- The concept of symphony before c. 1750
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symphony, a lengthy form of musical composition for orchestra, normally consisting of several large sections, or movements, at least one of which usually employs sonata form (also called first-movement form).
Symphonies in this sense began to be composed during the so-called Classical period in European music history, about 1740–1820. The early part of this period and the decade immediately preceding it are sometimes called pre-Classical, as are the symphonies written before about 1750. During the 19th century, which included the Romantic period, symphonies grew longer, and composers concerned themselves with ways of unifying the movements; extramusical programs and new approaches toward tonality (the major-minor system of chord progressions) were among the solutions to the problems of large-scale symphonic form. Late in the century, symphonies—and orchestras—had grown to such an extent that reaction set in, culminating in the Neoclassical movement of the early 20th century, in which composers turned again toward principles of balance and formal discipline, using new techniques to achieve dynamic coherence. Economic considerations forced a reduction in the size of orchestras and amount of rehearsal time available to mid-20th-century composers, further justifying a return to less extravagant symphonic thinking.
The word symphōnia was used by the Greeks in reference to notes sounding together in harmony and by extension meant an “ensemble” or “band” rather than a musical form. The word implies a pleasant concord of different notes and has been used in fields other than music to denote a pleasing combination of various elements. In the New Testament Gospel According to Luke (King James Version), symphōnia is translated as “musick,” as distinct from choroi, “dancing.” In the Middle Ages the name was given to several musical instruments, among them a double-headed drum, bowed stringed instruments, a large hurdy-gurdy, and bagpipes. Mention is made in 1582 of eine Symphonie, evidently a stringed keyboard instrument.
From the mid-16th century, symphonia (and related spellings) is a term often found in titles in which it simply indicated ensemble music, whether for instruments with voices or either alone. A collection of madrigals published in Antwerp in 1585 is entitled Symphonia angelica…raccolta per Huberto Waelrant. Later notable examples are the Sacrae symphoniae of the Venetian composer Giovanni Gabrieli (Book I, 1597; Book II, 1615), collections of elaborate instrumental and vocal music, often for multiple choirs; and the Symphoniae sacrae of his celebrated German pupil, Heinrich Schütz (1629, 1647, 1650). Schütz’s collection reveals his debt to the colourful and brilliantly orchestrated Italian style in works ranging from several voices to large polychoral compositions with solo parts and instruments. His countryman Samuel Scheidt’s 70 Symphonien auf Konzerten-Manier (1644) likewise combine instrumental and vocal ensembles to enrich the texture and heighten the drama of his music.
Symphonies for instruments alone during the early Baroque era (c. 1600–30) occur as independent pieces and as introductions or interludes in theatrical productions. The Italian Biagio Marini’s sinfonia La Orlandia (1617) is a duet for violin or cornetto (a wind instrument with finger holes and cup-shaped mouthpiece) and continuo in five brief contiguous sections, distinguished by contrasting metres and new melodic material in each section. (The continuo is a harmonic accompaniment improvised over the written bass line, usually played on a keyboard instrument and a bass viol or other bass melody instrument.) Early operas often include instrumental symphonies. Jacopo Peri’s Euridice (first performed 1600) includes a sinfonia for three flutes; Claudio Monteverdi’s lavish musical drama Orfeo (1607) is punctuated with five richly scored sinfonias, while a sinfonia da guerra (“sinfonia of war”) accompanies a staged battle in his Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ulysses to his Country; 1641). Each act of Stefano Landi’s opera Il Sant’Alessio (1632) opens with a sectional sinfonia. Many other opera and oratorio composers used short descriptive or introductory sinfonias, often of sectional form with contrasting metres and tempos.
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It remained for a Neapolitan, Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725), to formalize the overture to his operas as a fast–slow–fast sinfonia avanti l’opera, as in his opera Dal male il bene (1681; “Good from Evil”). The so-called Italian overture of this and later works, scored for strings and continuo, has been widely considered to contain the germ of the later three-movement symphony. In contrast with the more contrapuntal (based on interwoven melodic lines) French overture, which begins with a pompous slow movement and continues in a fugal section (involving imitation of a melody among several voices), the Italian style is immediately tuneful and predominantly homophonic (chordal) in texture. The first fast movement may be trivial; its symmetrical phrasing is unexpressive. The contrasting second movement may be more lyrical, perhaps anticipating tunes heard later in the opera. The last movement, sometimes a minuet, is an exuberant curtain raiser. This format spread quickly outside Italy, even to France. Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Zoroastre (1749), for example, includes such a fast–slow–fast overture. Rameau, indeed, was considered an exponent of the Italian style, particularly in his lucid harmonic treatment. This late Baroque concern with tonal clarity prefigured the attitudes of early Classical symphonists. Among the devices used to assure clarity are melodies constructed of arpeggiated (“harplike,” or broken) chords and passages in unison or in parallel thirds or sixths (sequences of harmonies formed by thirds, such as C–E or D–F, or sixths, such as C–A or D–B). These features are not common in Baroque music that is strictly contrapuntal in texture.
Learn about the origin, evolution, and characteristics of symphony, a lengthy form of musical composition for orchestra with several movements. Explore the works and composers of symphonies from the Classical period to the 20th century.
Learn about the origin, evolution and classification of symphonies, extended musical compositions for orchestra in Western classical music. Explore the different styles, forms and genres of symphonies from the Baroque era to the present day.
Jan 11, 2024 · Discover the best symphonies ever written, from Mozart to Florence Price and Beethoven, with some lesser-known discoveries along the way. Learn about the history, structure and significance of these epic works of orchestral music.
