The Symphony: Volume 1: Haydn to Dvořák

by Robert Simpson (Editor)

Articles on several specific 19th Century classical-music composers

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

382 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Robert Simpson was an English composer and long-serving BBC producer and broadcaster.

He is best known for his orchestral and chamber music (particularly those in the key classical forms: 11 symphonies and 15 string quartets), and for his writings on the music of Beethoven, Bruckner, Nielsen and Sibelius. He studied composition under Herbert Howells. Remarkably for a living contemporary composer, a Robert Simpson Society was formed in 1980 by individuals concerned that Simpson's music had been unfairly neglected. The Society aims to bring Simpson's music to a wider public by sponsoring recordings and live performances of his work, by issuing a journal and other publications, and by maintaining an archive of material relating to the composer.

As a writer on music (he would have disavowed the title 'musicologist'), Simpson was guided by his deep admiration for Tovey's ability to discuss a composer's sophisticated treatment of forms and keys in a manner that was accurate and incisive without ever alienating the non-specialist reader. His earliest published writings were as a reviewer and critic; but before long his focus had shifted towards being an advocate for widely unappreciated or misunderstood composers like Anton Bruckner, Carl Nielsen and Jean Sibelius, as well as to the analysis of better-known figures (such as Beethoven) whenever he felt able to illuminate their work from a composer's perspective. His writings can usefully be divided into five categories: (i) books written by Simpson; (ii) books edited by Simpson; (iii) contributions to other books and collections; (iv) posthumous collections of articles; (v) individual articles, programme- and sleeve-notes, etc.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Distilling the essence of what makes a symphony different from, say, chamber music or a sonata or a concerto, from Simpson's introduction takes quite a bit of re-reading and editing that introduction. Implicit in it are notions that there are no symphonic rules, as such, but principles and standards that must be met in order for a body of music to be classed as a symphony. And even these, he notes, were challenged by later composers (such as Schoenberg and Berg and Webern), which is a subject dealt with at length in the companion to this, volume 2, from Elgar to the present day (then 1967).

Simpson's starting point is to note the change that chamber music underwent in around 1730: change in tonality; 'a change of key being an event that thrust the original key away over the horizon' (p.9). It would return, but not until after a series of contrapuntal variations or modulations - Bach is cited - brought it back into modality as the dominant key/chord. Such key changes created a sense of dynamism and drama, and drove out much counterpoint, which the earlier music depended upon instead of key change, and this principle separated the symphony from the quartet, quintet, overture and suite. Though this in itself is still not enough. It needed a couple more changes: the sonata principle, and new scoring for a wider/bigger orchestra, rather than an intimate handful of key instruments.

These modulations and variations are developed within a formal sense of unity within a symphony; 'the name itself ... has come to mean a work for orchestra in which the composer has obeyed and mastered ... not a set of rules, but a body of principles, or standards' (p.12). These include '(1) the fusion of diverse elements into an organic whole' (p.13); '(2) the continuous control of pace'; '(3) the reserves of strength to achieve (1) and (2) ... such as to express size'; '(4) ... the dynamic treatment of tonality' (p.14); and that, '(5) ... the composer must never allow any prime element of the music (rhythm, melody, harmony, tonality) to seem to die ... in the attempt to achieve the highest state of organization of which music is capable.'

A feature of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century development of the symphony was the introduction of a fourth movement with the scherzo, a movement that replaces or supplements the minuet or dance movement.

Without a set of rules, such a nebulous 'definition' of the symphony implies its form as a composite of all these principles, which may of course be omitted or contravened in part, but which conspire to provide the new form which emerged out of the orchestral developments of Haydn and Mozart. Thus, this book introduces us first to the symphonies of Haydn, where Truscott develops the definition of the symphony from the key principle that the works considered as symphonies are for a 'public' orchestra, not an intimate group of chamber instruments, such as a quartet or quintet. Starting with this simple difference certainly helps.

This book, and its companion 'Elgar to The Present Day', is my tertiary exploration of the symphony. And from it I intended to investigate those composers whose works I have either not liked, ignored or not been exposed to until now. This means, of course, listening to those symphonies, like Haydn's, that I have but do not like. But I also intend to give those composers covered at least a single listen where I do not know them (Berwald, Schumann, Franck, Borodin) - if I can find a representative symphony on second-hand CD. This may, then, take another decade - but there is plenty still left to investigate of my secondary survey of the past decade or so. For I believe you must give a work at least 10 plays before you decline to consider it even possibly a piece that you may come to love. If I fail in this tertiary survey, it will be but the fault of common mortality.

The opening chapter on Haydn is principally useful to me because Truscott develops the definition of the symphony, using Haydn's 1st compared with contemporary chamber pieces. Thereafter his main concentration is on 49 and 97 to demonstrate the key shift and development from the middle to late symphonies, neither of which I have. I listened to five: 43 ('Mercury', 1771), 50 (1774), 58 (1767), 59 ('Fire', 1768), and 96 ('The Miracle', 1791), none of which I have heard but a couple of times since 1998; so this was a revisit to sparse lands, for me. Note that all of them are played by modern chamber orchestras.

While hitherto I have never taken to any of them, 43, the Mercury, opened pleasantly, and felt like Vivaldi - and I may yet come to like it. 50 has nothing to recommend it; it is primitive and its themes monotonous throughout. When you replay 43 after 50, of three years earlier, it feels very much the later, more sophisticated symphony. (This is probably why Brüggen and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment put 43 after 50 on their disc). Neither 58 nor 59 stir, though the minuet of 59, which both smacks of much earlier pomp and shows a sophistication of development which must mark the later symphonies, relieves the impression of Handel in that archaic horn sound, which projects through the finale. Not a favourite.

With Mozart I very much feel as Keller notes in his long piece (which discusses all of the symphonies): 'there is always "historical listening", which means talking oneself into an interest one does not feel' (p. 56). For me, Mozart may have been one of the salient geniuses of all time, by his and Einstein's measure (whom Keller quotes often in their mutual analysis), but his works fair bore me (well, perhaps not the Jupiter symphony; but that is only 'perhaps'). I read this chapter with a 'historical interest'. And yet, Keller's erudition and confidence in his analysis of these symphonies and this composer lit a small flame.

At the end, I realised that Keller had explained why I liked the Jupiter, Mozart's last symphony - not because he explained its technical innovations (in a piece where I understood only outlines of the technical detail), but because he showed that in this last symphony Mozart had advanced it to something just beyond the classical symphony, not an end, but a beginning of something new, a historical place Beethoven holds by general accord in the gargantuan advance that was the Eroica. For me, the modern (romantic) symphony was born in 1803; but it was, for Keller, actually changed with the Jupiter (1788). Thus, with listening to only a single Mozart symphony (35 'Haffner'), I got a lot from Keller's chapter - but you have to concentrate hard for three hours.

In fact, I got enough from Keller's piece that I intend (in the future) to get hold of those last symphonies, 37-41 (excluding 36, of which only the opening 20 bars are by Mozart; and the 35 'Haffner', which I did not like). I may even get hold of Uchida's Mozart piano concertos. But not before I turn to Beethoven....

Lam's chapter on Beethoven is the longest of the book, at 75 pages, and after an introduction which strikes as remarkably balanced and with a mind to tempering historical attitudes of the twentieth century to attempt interpretation of Beethoven's symphonies by reference to biography (he equates our appreciation of Shakespeare's works with little biographical knowledge of his life), but also with a mind to relishing the power of Beethoven's innovation as something metaphysical that happens within us (as all great music moves us), we deal with the symphonies one by one - about half an hour a piece, with the exceptions of the longer 3rd (50 mins.), 6th (43 mins.) and 9th (1 hr and 8 mins.). While the 5th feels longer, it is only half an hour; the 7th is longer by 10 mins., the 8th shorter by 5.

For me, to reiterate, the symphony started with the Eroica. Each movement is colossal in its power and emotional impact, and while the 2nd has some fine sections characteristic of Beethoven's power, the opening and finale of the 3rd hit somewhere entirely new, while the long Adagio (II) both takes us to a place of divine beauty matched by that of the Emperor piano concerto, 6 years later, and teaches us how Beethoven develops his melodies almost as clearly as does the finale of his Pastoral. It engenders a thrill that is viscerally physical, throughout, alongside a mental thrill of just how clever and beautiful it all is. The heart sings. It does not sing with the 1st, the 2nd, or the 4th.

The 5th evokes a mental response to its cleverness and power, in getting so much out of four notes. The 6th takes us somewhere new again, to a world of serene beauty, a bucolic world (the world that word was invented for), where even in the midst of the brief storm, blackness in the sky is also beautiful, like a moving watercolour with inks, laid down by the basses and timpani.

The 7th is a rambunctious, crazed dance at 100 mph, a run around the walls, interrupted by a gorgeous Allegretto. Lam demonstrates the number of key changes in this riotous symphony, and such power gained from a smaller orchestra than used in the 5th and 6th, 6 basses, 2 of woodwinds and brass, though no trombones - instead, 2 contrabassoons. And it is perhaps unsurprising that the 8th is a cut-back to almost classical origins, almost chamber-like in its scope, like Mahler's 4th - required after the mammoth symphonies that precede them. A breath before the Ninth, yet another major innovation in the symphony, where more is more, each movement delivering and delivering.

Lam's piece was highly technical, analysing the symphonies passage by passage, key to key, while referencing others of Beethoven's works and other composers (Bach, Mozart, Gluck, Brahms, Wagner),.and was way over my head. But because I know most of them so well I managed to follow their prolix breakdown to at least be able to marry the section with his analysis even while not listening concurrently. For me, this enriched an otherwise obscure text which only musicians could follow. I particularly liked the way he denounced detractors and married sections with the poetry of Shakespeare, Milton and Yeats. A very erudite piece. Shame I could not understand it. My fault.

I am bemused as to why Swedish composer Berwald is in this collection? Anybody? Layton's write-up, while briefly considering excerpts from the 4 symphonies, largely repeats that Berwald's conservatism and adherence to the classical, i.e. not Romantic, form doesn’t contribute to the ongoing evolution of the form, nor that he influenced successive composers. And so he rests.

Truscott's analysis of Schubert centres on his changes of pace. This might seem elementary, but he notes that Schubert was not primarily interested in key change, and his modulation of pace was something cleverly contrived, where he would, for example, maintain an allegro pace while introducing a reference to an earlier adagio within it, making it seem that the pace had changed, while it still maintained that of the allegro, thus creating the impression of two different tempi simultaneously. I listened out for this when playing the 5th, 6th, 8th and 9th by Karajan and the BPO, but my musical ear could not catch it.

Cairns' long essay on Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique of 1830 - six years after Beethoven's Ninth - spends its first half justifying Berlioz's only well-known symphony, of four. It is full of the flowery language of vaguely aesthetic half-nonsense about poetry and the idée fixe which is the running theme about which the very varied five movements are developed, and about which the second part of the essay is involved.

Berlioz's symphony, if stood alongside Beethoven's Ninth, is a pleasantly diverting piece, its primary interest being the strong variation of those five movements: an allegro of passions, a delicate waltz, a pastoral scene, a torturous march, and a rousing final overture. We do not need any further justification from any critic. But there it rests - quietly, largely undemandingly. Playing it again, it does, however, grow on you, even while only played twice a year. It has its charms, but it does not touch the hem of the greatness of Beethoven's Ninth.

Mendelssohn is written about as enthusiastically by Harrison as Berlioz was by Cairns, but it flows much better as an essay. Four symphonies are discussed, including a youthful untitled one, then the Reformation, plus the Scotch and the Italian. I have heard both these last before, but do not remember them. It may be time, then, to reacquaint myself with them. Harrison mentions the fourth, which he likens more to a cantata than a symphony. I listened to Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 52, 'Lobgesang' (Hymn of Praise), which was choral, and, yes, more of a cantata than a symphony - but the numbering now doesn't cohere with Harrison's; it must be the same one. But there was enough fluidity in this essay to inspire a re-visit to Mendelssohn, whose symphonies are highly pictorial, like his Hebrides Overture.

Schumann is a composer I have never understood, neither in song nor symphony. I listened to Thielemann's cycle of the four symphonies with the Staatskapelle Dresden in 2022, and found them pleasant yet uninspiring, despite Harrison's attempts to convince us otherwise - and they certainly are not masterpieces, as he concludes, unless you are a Schumann fan; more, as he slips in, fireside comfort pieces. Further exposure is needed to convince myself of this, and perhaps a revisit would be worthwhile, as with Mendelssohn's - yet I am not inspired to do so. Yet I see I must.

I have given Liszt's two symphonies a fair listening in the past couple of years, the Faust (1854) and the Dante (1855), but found them disappointing, unfixed in the mind, after some wonderful piano works. But, again, they need a good 10 plays before I can truly judge them - and that, with 3 years between the first and second plays, is a long way off yet. But, a beginning, at least....

Franck is another composer whose works I have missed entirely. And Manduell's short (and often disparaging) essay on his single symphony doesn’t encourage you to go out and get a copy and give it its due....

And so we come to Bruckner, that giant of a symphonist, who - as one critic memorably remarked - lays down slabs of sound in great tranches. Of the 10 symphonies I have given them all a fair listening over the past 15 years - Bruckner is a very late love - and the 4th has for some time been a firm favourite, yet all are worthwhile. Solti includes Symphony No. 0, 'Die Nullte' [1869] in his 1996 box set with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Barenboim does not, in his 1998 set with the BPO. There is little difference in recording quality between the two sets, yet I always feel that recordings by the BPO will tend to be superior in quality - but really, visiting either set is a pleasure.

Cooke brings one essential thing to my consideration of Bruckner that I had not articulated to myself. That being, he uses the same type of introduction to each of his symphonies, and most of his movements - having taken inspiration from the mysterious commencement of Beethoven's 9th. Cooke commences with Bruckner's 3rd, 'Wagner'. I listened out for the creation mystery opening, and the subsequent building to the creation theme, then the falling off, with solo brass or woodwind response, before building to the main theme with his characteristic slabs of sound, cycling through these cathedralic constructions and diminutions in each movement. And appreciated Bruckner's signature structures a little more, where I had always 'felt' them before - entirely unavoidable in listening to any Bruckner symphony.

I didn’t know Borodin had written any symphonies, two complete, the third sketched (its two movements completed by Glazunov, a more accomplished symphonist, with 8 to his name, all of them available, but not on decent productions). Manduell covers all three, and notes the Second for special selection. Two and a half symphonies might not seem much, but Borodin was a chemist first, and a composer in his spare time - so quite a feat. I'll certainly try to pick up the two analysed.

Harrison clearly loves Brahms, and all four of the symphonies; it's not difficult to agree with him, since that famous Beethoven's 10th, his first, but I don’t get anywhere near as much out of the other three after it. Yet, playing them individually now and then, instead of in sequence, the immediate comparison is lost, and you appreciate them more for their own sake. The 4th is particularly distant, and Harrison notes that it is far less romantic in sweep than its predecessors, and that the variations in the finale follow a late Bach piece with that composer's natural brilliance for variation. I listened to the four in order by Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker. I have them by Haitink and the Concertgebouw, but the production quality is not quite as good, and I am used the those tempi now.

Keller's piece on Tchaikovsky runs through the early symphonies, even discussing the throwaway 1st, giving a decent account of the 'Little Russian' (2) and the 'Polish' (3), and leads to his favourite 4th, spending much time on it. But he spends little time on the great 5th, because it's been written about so much. So too the sublime 6th. He does address the Manfred briefly. I know these last 3 numbered symphonies very well, and cover the Manfred as much as the 'Polish' and 'Little Russian'. He also lists the reconstructed unnumbered E symphony, but I've never heard it played ever, and probably never will.

Harrison's essay on Dvořák's 9 symphonies (re-numbered logically after an earlier century's discounting of the first 4) brings praise alongside askance views of criticism, among those comments being the immaturity of the first two or three (Dvořák wanted to destroy the earlier ones later in life), the patchwork nature of some (including the 'New World'), yet maintains an appreciation for his standard as a symphonist which, having only heard the last two, I don't see. But, again, I must hear those others several times before I can confirm this as an honest view.

Overall, this work is way above my head, but will appeal to a trained musician. You need to be able to read the excerpts given in order to understand the essays and the symphonies as critiqued. I have about 15 symphonies which I own that I have yet to listen to again - but know most of them well anyway. There are probably have about 25 new ones I should listen to, if I am to consider this tertiary survey complete. Given enough time, say 5 years, I may well do that. Reading these two volumes on the symphony has convinced me of that.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deryck Cooke on Bruckner, Humphrey Searle on Liszt, and Robert Layton on Berwald are excellent; Hans Keller on Mozart and Tchaikovsky not so much. I am looking forward to Volume 2.