Symphony - A Travesty

Did anyone hear the Radio 3 'Music Matters' broadcast yesterday. Much as I find Tom Service's Guardian blog tiresome (too earnest and not as unintentionally funny as Norman Lebrecht) the discussion centred about the health of the symphony today.

Alexander Goehr (composer of three 'symphonies') believes that the medium of the symphony was linked to a certain time and place (and I paraphrase here) when each cities symphony orchestra was central to the culture. If you factor in the continuing tradition of writing symphonies in Scandinavia (where orchestras still hold a central place in the culture of the city) there is something to the point Goehr is making. In show is full of good discussion, although the critic from Germany (sorry, I forget her name) does try to bend the rules by saying large scale pieces composed for symphonic orchestra are 'symphonies' - which I think is cheating. Much as I like some of the works being created in this style I am sure when a composer calls a work a symphony, he or she knows what they are doing.

The other point, which is related to both the issues above, is that maybe contemporary composers just have moved away from the symphonic form. Parla has written (at great length) about the decline of the symphony in the Austro-German tradition and the argument was made that this is linked to the need of the second world war and an unconcious/concious desire to break with the past - a past that many young composers in 1945 felt was tainted by history. In this again I see some truth - and that many good symphonic composers from Germany chose self-imposed exile in the 1930s, separating them from the cultural traditions. Composers such as KA Hartmann, Weill, Toch, Wellesz and Hindemith all wrote symphonies that belong in that tradition, but many composed in exile.

Magnus

I agree with you up to a point, but at the same time I don't think the concept will ever die out - there will always be composers who see the 'Symphony' as a form of music that they may wish to use to express their views. Essentially the symphonic form is the biggest and grandest for of expression for a full orchestral piece, or at least it has retained that 'label'.

As for 'serious' music dying I don't see that happening either. We could talk about that isue forever and certainly there are people expending enormous energy trying to find a way forward (for example Greg Sandow, though I have to say I find some of his suggestions frankly silly).

I don't agree but, even if you were right, surely a documentary on 'The Symphony' should have covered that very point, particularly as the programme seemed to be aimed people like me (who are still trying to learn about music) rather than people like you who apparently are not.

Best of luck with that, Vic. However, with the Yuletide season beckoning, you may have considerably greater chance of succeeding with a letter up the chimney to Santa.

I'll have to give this series a try. I will approach it like I would some light reading, though. Like Vic said, it's a TV series, not a treatise.

I expect to enjoy it, too, since I've previously liked those Beethoven and Mozart docu-drama things the BBC made a while ago.

kev - You've obviously missed the whole point of the Vaughan Williams 3rd Symphony. It is not "cow-pat" music. It was begun in France in 1916 where VW was serving in the ambulance corps and, as Michael Kennedy has written, is his "War Requiem, an elegy for a lost generation." Listen to it again in that context.

To be fair, a point made very clearly in the Symphony programme.