Writing Symphonies

[sbeckmesser]

So how is IMSLP going to categorize Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms or Webern's Symphony when they lapse into the public domain. Are we not going to follow the composer's expressed wishes? Would you claim that these works are not symphonies? If not, why not? Are you intellectually equipped to do battle with the likes of Stravinsky or Webern? I myself am willing to take these great composers at their word and try to understand why they did what they did.

These two composers are making an artistic statement by the very act of designating their works as symphonies. By the use of that term they are deliberately relating these pieces to the Symphonic Tradition. Since Stravinsky and Webern didn't tell us which aspects of that tradition they were connecting to, it is up to us to figure that out. Once this exercise is undertaken you'll find that these "non-symphonies" -- especially Webern's with its extremely highly condensed take on what Mahler and Bruckner took hours to accomplish -- show that Tradition in a new light. This wouldn't happen if Webern had called his piece: "Very short 12-tone piece in only two movements for a somewhat weirdly constituted orchestra." Any contemporary composer in designating a work a symphony must therefore realize that doing so will force the listener to try to make similar connections to the great Tradition. And once those connections are made, the piece will have to be pretty damn good to stand up to comparisons with the likes of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz (who wrote non-symphonic symphonies such as Romeo et Juliette and Harold in Italy, as well as non-operatic operas such as the Damnation of Faust), Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Shostakovich to name but a few of the its core members.

--Sixtus