VII.

19th Century

The emergence of romanticism in music brought two opposing trends in symphonic composition: the incorporation into the symphony of elements of program music and the concentration on ideals of classical form, with melodies and harmonies typical of the 19th century. Exemplifying the first trend were French composer Hector Berlioz and Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. Their symphonies have specific literary (or nonmusical) ideas behind them and share elements of the symphonic poem. A recurring melodic element in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique (1830), for example, represents the woman who haunts the composer’s dreams. The entire symphony describes his infatuation and obsession with her.

Austrian composer Franz Schubert, by contrast, was essentially classical in his approach to symphonic form; yet his melodies and harmonies are unmistakably romantic. His most famous symphonies are the Unfinished (1822) and the Great (1828). The symphonies of German composers Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann display the rich harmony characteristic of romanticism. Mendelssohn’s most famous symphonies—the Scottish (1842), Italian (1833), and Reformation (1841)—contain elements of program music that are suggested by the titles. Schumann’s symphonies, including the Spring (1841) and the Rhenish (1850), are structurally loose and very melodious.

The most successful synthesis of the classical symphonic form with the romantic style is to be found in the four symphonies of Johannes Brahms. These symphonies remain classical in their tightly knit structure yet romantic in their emotional expressiveness, although Brahms spurned unusual effects for their own sake. Russian composer Peter Tchaikovsky wrote six symphonies, programmatic in spirit, that combine intense emotion with traces of Russian folk music and, especially in the last three, well-thought-out musical development.

Austrians Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler were influenced greatly by the music dramas of German composer Richard Wagner. Bruckner’s nine symphonies utilize massive orchestral sonorities and achieve unity through the repetition of melodic and rhythmic patterns. Mahler greatly expanded the length of the symphony and frequently altered its form with extensive passages of vocal music. Mahler emphasized the colors, or timbres, of individual instruments, and he introduced the practice of ending a symphony in a different key than it had begun. Previously, beginning and ending a symphony in the same key had been a means of achieving unity. Mahler wished his symphonies to “contain the world” and he incorporated religious and philosophical ideas about human aspirations and humankind’s struggle against fate. Czech composer Antonín Dvořák is noted for his skillful use of folk tunes, as in the symphony entitled From the New World (1893).

Well-known symphonies have also been written by French composers Vincent d’Indy and Camille Saint-Saëns and Russian composers Aleksandr Borodin and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. The Symphony in D Minor of Belgian-French composer César Franck exemplifies a 19th-century trend toward cyclical structure: the binding together of different movements by means of recurrent themes or motifs.