Symphony and other Orchestral music
(The Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus, the size of chorus and orchestra needed for later romantic symphonies. Photograph: Alan McCredie).
There was a reaction to the vast compositions of Bruckner and Mahler and while some composers continued to write music in this romantic style, many composers considered that romanticism had run its course. As an anti-romantic reaction grew, new ideas were being tried and as the century progressed it became evident that music was entering a period of very diverse styles of composition. Composers throughout this period continued to write symphonies but the styles of composition and the sound of the orchestra became very varied with lots of ‘isms’ and ‘alities’ appearing. There is a long list! Nationalism, impressionism, expressionism, pointillism, serialism, neo-classicism, minimalism, polytonality, atonality and microtonality, to mention only some. Symphonic and orchestral works were written in many but not necessarily all of these styles.
Neo-classicism (Neoclassic style)
Some composers wrote symphonies which, while using more modern sounds and harmonies, looked back to the traditional forms of the Classical period and before. The Russian composer Prokofiev, in his ’Classical Symphony’, based his ideas on how he thought a symphony would have sounded in the twentieth century if it had been written by Haydn. He used the traditional forms with modern harmonies. Both the first and last movements are in sonata form while the third movement of this symphony is a dance, a gavotte. If you have studied the Classical period pages of this topic you will remember that the third movement of a symphony at that time was usually a dance, a minuet. Listen to the entire movement, just under two minutes in length, and notice the unusual harmonic changes in the music.
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Impressionism
Impression, sunrise by Claude Monet
This style borrowed its name from the artists such as Degas and Monet from the end of the nineteenth century and tried to create ‘impressions’ in music. Foremost among these composers was Debussy, who disregarded many of the harmonic conventions of the romantic movement and used series of parallel chords, often using a whole tone scale, to create a different colour in the music much in the same way as the artists used bright brush strokes of colour in their paintings. None of his works are actually called a symphony; however, the ‘Trois nocturnes' and ‘La mer’ are symphonic in proportions. Listen to this excerpt from the ‘Trois nocturnes’, ‘Fêtes’, and notice how the music gives the clear impression of an approaching procession, an excerpt which could also be described as programmatic as it appears to tell a story! Notice how the music starts with chords on two harps and the muted trumpets in the background which become normal trumpets as the procession approaches throughout the gradual crescendo to the climax of the excerpt.
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Nationalism
This style which emerged during the latter part of the nineteenth century in the works of composers such as Dvorak, Smetana and Grieg was continued in the twentieth century by many composers from different countries. In England, Vaughan Williams and Holst were interested in British folk music and included elements of this in their compositions without necessarily quoting actual songs. Vaughan Williams, like many symphonic composers before him, wrote nine symphonies and in his first one ‘A Sea Symphony’, written for soprano and baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra, the folk song influence which had been absorbed into his orchestral writing can be heard in this short excerpt which also seems to reflect his period of study in France with the impressionist composer Ravel. This excerpt from the scherzo third movement starts with descending diminuendo, impressionist in style, before the chorus enters. The male chorus section at the end of the excerpt has a distinct ‘English’ feel to the sound.
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In America, Aaron Copland used cowboy songs in his ballet music and folk melodies in his orchestral work ‘Appalachian spring’, while Charles Ives was influenced by folk songs and dance music in most of his compositions. In this excerpt from an early work, his Symphony No. 2, this section of the movement is dance-like in style and is clearly based on the development of material from the folk song ‘Yankee doodle’.
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In Russia, Shostakovich wrote 15 symphonies, many of which portray events in Soviet Russian history. Here is a short excerpt from his Symphony No. 7, ‘The Leningrad’. The symphony is long, nearly 70 minutes in length, and this excerpt, from the end of the final movement and originally subtitled ‘Victory’, is written for a massive orchestra with two harps, added woodwind instruments and 10 extra brass players.
Expressionism
La Grand Jatte by Seurat
Atonality, sometimes described as ‘expressionism’ and taking its name from the artists such as Munch, is represented in the music of Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils Anton Webern and Alban Berg. All of these composers wrote orchestral music. In art ‘expressionism’ developed into ‘pointillism’, where artists such as Seurat used dots of bright colour to construct their paintings. Webern used disjointed chords, wild leaps, dissonant harmonies and dramatic contrasts to construct his music. Listen to this excerpt from a concerto where each instrument adds splashes of bright colour to the music.
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Serialism
Also known as 12-note music, this music was developed by Schoenberg, Webern and Berg and is also covered briefly in the concerto section of this website. Webern wrote one symphony in this style.
Composers such as Rachmaninov still wrote in a warm romantic style while others took a more individual approach. Listen to an excerpt from his Symphony No. 3 written between 1935 and 1937. Notice the large orchestra, particularly the large brass section, rich, lush harmonies, and the dramatic contrast in dynamics as the excerpt ends with a very pronounced diminuendo.
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Sir William Walton’s music still had a romantic feel but with some added dissonance to spice things up, while Benjamin Britten, perhaps the foremost British composer of the twentieth century, worked in an entirely individual way moulding all the best of old and new ideas into his work including the ‘Spring Symphony’ and the ‘Simple Symphony’.
The tradition continues to this day with the work of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, resident in the Orkney Islands, who is still writing and finished his Symphony No. 8, ‘The Antarctic’, in the year 2000.