What is classical music? · Unit 4: Kinds of work
The symphony
A is a large work for orchestra, usually in four movements that follow a familiar order. The first is fast and often in . The second is slow. The third is a dance, a in Haydn and Mozart and a from Beethoven onwards. The finale is fast again.
The name comes from a Greek word for sounding together, and the symphony grew out of the short orchestral pieces that opened Italian operas. Haydn did not invent it, but over more than a hundred symphonies he made it the central kind of orchestral music.
Beethoven enlarged every part of it. His Ninth, first performed in Vienna in 1824, even brings four solo singers and a choir into the finale. Later composers stretched the form further, and some of Mahler’s symphonies last an hour and a half.
HaydnSymphony No. 104 in D majorThe third movement of Haydn’s last symphony is a minuet, a dance in three beats. In the middle comes a contrasting dance, the : here quieter and in an unexpected key, with a tune for woodwind and violin over plucked strings. Afterwards the minuet returns.
HaydnSymphony No. 104 in D majorThe finale opens over a long-held D in the horns and cellos, like the drone of a bagpipe, while the violins play a folk-like dance tune.
The first movement and the finale usually carry the weight of the argument; the middle movements are where a composer sings or dances. A first movement in a minor key is often answered by a finale in the major, as in Beethoven’s Fifth, which ends in a blaze of C major. Knowing the order helps you find your way in a symphony you have never heard before.