Who are your favorite composers of symphonies?  Which symphonies
are your favorites?  What do you like about them?  

30 responses total.

Briefly:
-Tshaikovsky (sp) 4th (F minor)
-Beethoven 7th  (A (minor?))
-Shostakovich  5th (D minor)

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.

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

  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.

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.

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).

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. 

I like Beethoven's later symphonies... almost every thing after 5.  

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.

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...)

  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.

Which Beethovan symphony is it that has a one note movement?

The 2nd movement of th 7th symphony is probably
referred to as a one-note movement, though it
really isn't.  Just a guess.

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>

  I don't think so.

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.

And then there's the One Note Samba by Antonio Carlos Jobim...

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?

I'm ashamed to admit that I can never keep him and Schubert straight.  I
_think_ the one I like more is Schubert.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Since I never heard of Schuman before, I will save myself confusion by rhyming
it with "human".  I also do not pronounce the "o" in "on" like a German "a".

[Wiliam Schuman, in addition to composing music,
was the president of the Juilliard School in NYC
for many years, and went on to be the first
president of Lincoln Center.  Juilliard flourished
under him, but his tenure at Lincoln center was so 
problem-filled that "To err is Schuman" became a
catch phrase in the press.  Does that help?]

William Schuman's 3rd symphony is very popular and 
much performed and recorded.  His 6th is his best,
in my opinion.

On in Boston had the same vowel as God, hot, dog, etc.  New Yorkers used two
different vowels for hot and dog (hat dawg).  Boston o is like London o,
Michigan o is like the a in Bach or father.

That brings up again the observation that no word rhymes with dog - if you
are from New York. I say "dawg", but not fawg, hawg. So, what o is that in
Boston (which I say Bawstun)...aha! Boston at least alliterates with my
dog.

Re 25: no.  But I really don't follow things like that.

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