| Grex > Classicalmusic > #34: The Symphony Item |
| The Symphony Item | 
Apr 7 11:49 UTC 1998 |
Who are your favorite composers of symphonies? Which symphonies are your favorites? What do you like about them?
| response 1 of 30: |
Apr 7 16:59 UTC 1998 |
Briefly: -Tshaikovsky (sp) 4th (F minor) -Beethoven 7th (A (minor?)) -Shostakovich 5th (D minor)
| response 2 of 30: |
Apr 7 22:01 UTC 1998 |
Love 'em all. Beethoven's 7th was my favorite symphony in the world for a long time. Probably still is. Who are the great symphonists? Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Mahler, Sibelius, Schostakovich. Good but not as consistently great might include Schubert, Schumann, Bruckner, Vaughan Williams. (I'd put Schubert with the "greats" on the strength of his 5th, 8th and 9th symphonies alone, but that's just me.) Who else? Prokofiev? I know I'm leaving some out. Favorite individual symphonies of mine include all 9 of Beethoven's, the 3 Schuberts mentioned above, Brahms' 1st, 3rd and 4th, Dvorak's "New World," Mahler's 6th, Vaughan William's 3rd (the "Pastoral"), Schostakovich's 10th (which might be the greatest symphony of the 20th century, now that all is almost said and done). There's a special place in my heart for certain American symphonies: Barber's 1st, Copland's 3rd, Schuman's 6th, Harris's 3rd, etc. I don't know how good any of them really are, being way too American myself to judge them fairly.
| response 3 of 30: |
Apr 9 17:25 UTC 1998 |
I'm not a big symphony listener these days, but when I was, specific
symphonies of Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Sibelius ranked
highest on my list. Favorites include
Beethoven's 7th
Mozart's 40th
Mendelssohn's "Italian"
Sibelius' 2nd
| response 4 of 30: |
Apr 11 06:28 UTC 1998 |
I am a big fan of Beethovan's 6th (Pastoral). How I discovered it is a good story. I love old movies, and I happened to catch a showing of "Soylent Green" with Charleton Heston and Edward G. Robinson (his final film). Robinson's character decides it's time to die and so he goes to the suicide clinic, and there is the scene where he is looking at a green meadow while the 6th begins playing in the background. Years later, I'm in Liberty Music shopping for cheap CD's and I came across a copy of the 6th by Von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. My mom told me that this was an especially good copy of the 6th, so I bought it. Today it's my favorite Beethovan symphony and I play it on cold nasty days so I can imagine spring in all its splendor. I also love his 9th. I have heard the 7th, but it has nothing on the 6th. It is the perfect symphony.
| response 5 of 30: |
Apr 11 12:15 UTC 1998 |
Associations and memories like those can mean everything. My dad and I used to go fishing, and when we came back to the house he'd make us lunch and put some music on. There was a picture window looking out on the stairs down to the lake, the pine woods, the boat house, the lake itself, and the sky. When I hear Beethoven's 6th, I still think of that, and for a long time Beethoven's 6th was my favorite symphony, too, until I listened to the 7th.
| response 6 of 30: |
Apr 11 17:14 UTC 1998 |
I like a bunch of Beethoven symphonies. I'd have to put the 7th as my favorite. I've heard it a bit more rarely than some others (a *lot* more rarely than the 5th, naturally). Interestingly, a rock version off an early Deep Purple album was my first exposure (and *only* one for many years).
| response 7 of 30: |
Apr 11 20:06 UTC 1998 |
I played the 6th so much that I can identify it hearing just two bars - sometimes just one. I have made the error, however, of identifying Schubert's Unfinished as Beethoven's 6th after just one bar......but I haven't looked at the scores to see if Schubert plagarized that bar.
| response 8 of 30: |
Apr 12 18:39 UTC 1998 |
I like Beethoven's later symphonies... almost every thing after 5.
| response 9 of 30: |
Jul 21 21:38 UTC 1999 |
I've just run across this item and would like to put in a word about Beethoven's symphonies. I've been all over the map with him. His 5th is the work which first sold me on classical music in the first place: I had been wondering what came after the "da-da-da-dum". I was quite blown away by what I heard. Subsequently I decided that the 7th was my favorite Beethoven symphony, then the 3rd, then the 1st (!), then the 3rd. Now I'm listening to the 5th again after a gap of some years, and realizing how good it still is when one comes to it with fresh ears.
| response 10 of 30: |
Jul 23 03:32 UTC 1999 |
The seventh Beethoven symphony is definitely my favorite: the second movement is one of the saddest pieces of music I've ever heard, and I love the finale when the theme is restated on top of the pulsing bass line. (I was going to say "the saddest piece of music" but then I thought of Rachmaninov's second piano concerto...)
| response 11 of 30: |
Jul 25 07:16 UTC 1999 |
My favorite is the Sixth (Pastoral) by Beethovan, followed closely by the Ninth (Choral). I first encountered the 6th in a movie that I happened to be watching called Soylent Green. The scene where Edward G. Robinson goes to the euthanasia center and as he is reclining on a bed, the screen shows a beautiful meadow scene while the first notes of the Pastoral start up. I have always loved that scene. Sometimes in the dead of winter when everything is overgrown with ice and snow and the tempurature is hovering in the single digits, I'll dig the Pastoral out and play it as loud as I can drenching myself in the music, hoping somehow that the notes will melt the winter away and let the spring come out in all it's verdant splendor. The ninth is a wonderful piece of music, especially the last movement. Incidentally, as I was watching the lightning display to the southwest, I was replaying the storm movement of the 6th in my head. You know, for being a deaf guy, Beethovan sure could capture the essesnce of life in his music.
| response 12 of 30: |
Jul 25 13:10 UTC 1999 |
Which Beethovan symphony is it that has a one note movement?
| response 13 of 30: |
Jul 25 18:04 UTC 1999 |
The 2nd movement of th 7th symphony is probably referred to as a one-note movement, though it really isn't. Just a guess.
| response 14 of 30: |
Aug 5 22:35 UTC 1999 |
I think Michael Delizia is right: the second movement of Beethoven's 7th begins with the accompaniment (to the eventual theme) alone, with several repetitions of the same note. (Sibelius's 2nd has an actual theme, on the oboe in the 3d movement as I recall, which begins with 10 or 11 repetitions of the same note.) Jonathan Oddie writes that this Beethoven movement is one of the saddest pieces he's ever heard. I agree, so much so that the first time I heard the 7th, I wondered if the record had been mislabled and if perhaps I was hearing the famous Funeral March from the Eroica (which at that time I'd never heard) instead. Dr Teeth, I wonder if your opinion of the Pastorale would differ if you'd first heard it in _Fantasia_ instead of _Soylent Green_. <g>
| response 15 of 30: |
Aug 6 06:31 UTC 1999 |
I don't think so.
| response 16 of 30: |
Aug 6 12:07 UTC 1999 |
The oboe theme referred to in #14 is the pastoral
interlude ("trio section" I guess) in the scurrying
third-movement scherzo of Sibelius' 2nd. It starts
with the same note repeated nine times. The king of
"one-note" symphonists has to be Schubert. Listen
to the opening theme (after the introduction) of the
first movement of the "Great" C major symphony, or
the quiet second theme in the last movement. This
was a quirk of Schubert's, though, not limited to
his symphony.
| response 17 of 30: |
Sep 4 11:35 UTC 1999 |
And then there's the One Note Samba by Antonio Carlos Jobim...
| response 18 of 30: |
Feb 14 13:57 UTC 2000 |
I note that we've left out Schumann. He wrote only four symphonies, but each one is a gem. The "Rhenish" (#3) is probably the most famous and frequently performed, but I love the 2nd best. Any other Schumann fans here?
| response 19 of 30: |
Feb 14 21:42 UTC 2000 |
I'm ashamed to admit that I can never keep him and Schubert straight. I _think_ the one I like more is Schubert.
| response 20 of 30: |
Feb 18 21:18 UTC 2000 |
Ah, wait till you start confusing (Robert) Schumann with (William) Schuman, noisy 20th-century American. I'm enough of a Robert Schumann fan that the solemn movement of the Rhenish kept passing through my mind as I visited Cologne Cathedral; but for some reason I hardly know the Second, and my favorite of his symphonies is definitely the Fourth: dark and rumbling. Along with Beethoven, he's my favorite composer for piano: I would much rather listen to Murray Perahia or the late Claudio Arrau play Schumann than almost anybody playing almost anything by Chopin.
| response 21 of 30: |
Feb 19 00:31 UTC 2000 |
Schumann rhymes with "bloom on." Schuman rhymes with "human." I rather like much of Schuman's noise, only he repeats himself instead of sounding like himself, if you know what I mean, so I can't take too much of it in one sitting.
| response 22 of 30: |
Feb 19 01:44 UTC 2000 |
It only rhymes with bloom on in Michigan, where o is pronounced like the a in Bach. Took me a while to figure out what you meant. Mannheim.
| response 23 of 30: |
Feb 19 03:39 UTC 2000 |
I was rhyming Schumann with "bloom on" when I was growing up in Massachusetts, so I don't think it's a Michigan thing. How is the word "on" pronounced elsewhere?
| response 24 of 30: |
Feb 19 04:45 UTC 2000 |
I find I make no distinction in pronouncing Schumann and Schuman. Where am I from? [8^}], though on further trials I find I may shift the emphasis toward the mann in Schumann and toward the Schu in Schuman, probably because mann means something in German.