The Great American Symphony

[(poco) Sforzando]

Diamond, Hanson and Mennin are very good composers...the live symphonic repertoire could really use some freshening...the endless cavalcade of warhorses really gets tedious...there is so much fine music that is not performed nearly often enough...
to hell with yet another Rach'y Sym #2, a dreadful, boring, murky mess..2 fine symphonies of Diamond or Mennin could be heard for one slog thru this tired sonic miasma...

Tedious and tiresome to whom? To conductors, players, audiences, critics, all of the above? The American composers you mention may well be worth another hearing and I will check my shelves to see what I have by each of them, and fill in any gaps that seem promising. But just because you have a bug up your rear end about a deservedly popular Russian Romantic doesn't require the rest of us to agree with you.

I'm 67 now and have been through a lifetime of concert going, and I'm not likely to jump at many concerts right now because tickets have become absurdly expensive and there are all the associated expenses of travel and meals. And I don't begrudge orchestras from playing popular warhorses when these are the works most audiences want to hear, including those listeners who are just starting out with classical music or those who attend live concerts only occasionally. Economics have to be considered too. Many years ago the most exciting concert programmed by my local Long Island Philharmonic included Shostakovich 10. I was keenly disappointed when it was cancelled but was told that renting the parts became prohibitive.

But your accusation that the symphonic repertoire needs refreshing doesn't necessarily stand up to examination either. A lot of course depends on the particular orchestra and region of the country, but the truth is that (at least with the major orchestras and other groups), there is more willingness to take chances than there was even 20 years ago. Even that most conservative of institutions, the Metropolitan Opera, is now presenting works by Saariaho, Adès, Nico Muhly, Glass, and John Adams. As for the NY Philharmonic, its 2016-17 season (besides the expected large doses of Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, et al.) includes music by the following - and note above all the presence of women composers:

Ligeti
Copland
Bolcom
Wynton Marsalis
Adams
Esa-Pekka Salonen
Timo Andres
Lera Auerbach
Anna Thorvaldsdottir
Corigliano
HK Gruber
John Adams
Julia Adolphe
Ravi Shankar
Tansy Davies

And not a single piece by Rachmaninoff.

[Heck148]

Tedious and tiresome to whom? To conductors, players, audiences, critics, all of the above?

yes..

The American composers you mention may well be worth another hearing and I will check my shelves to see what I have by each of them, and fill in any gaps that seem promising.

great idea - I hope you find lots of new attractions

I don't begrudge orchestras from playing popular warhorses when these are the works most audiences want to hear, including those listeners who are just starting out with classical music or those who attend live concerts only occasionally.

I'm not saying they should never be performed - but must it be so frequently?? must they occupy so much concert time/space?? It's like a vicious, downward-spiraling circle - it just keeps getting more in-grown - people like the same old warhorses because that's what they are familiar with because that's what gets played and that's what they are familiar with, because that's what is played..etc, etc, etc.
yes people want to hear them, but maybe people would want to hear some less well-known music if they actually got the chance to hear it in live performance.

but the truth is that (at least with the major orchestras and other groups), there is more willingness to take chances than there was even 20 years ago.

glad to hear it!! I know the Boston Sym has been pretty adventurous, it definitely was with Levine - entire Schoenberg concerts - that was great...

And not a single piece by Rachmaninoff.

maybe we're making progress...

[amw]

Disagree completely - there have been many fine symphonies written by Americans

Well we're talking about great symphonies. There are certainly American symphonies that are okay, or good-but-flawed, or whatever. Some people certainly like them, and I'm sure I could find a few that I like (maybe Rochberg's 1st, one of Reynolds's... Kernis's 1st which is not a good symphony but very good kitsch). Others will find nothing to appreciate in them, and not for lack of musical knowledge, as is often the case when people criticise Mozart (whose craft and innovation at least should be obvious even if one doesn't enjoy the results). For example I've listened to most of the Schuman symphonies and none of them stick in the memory or break any new ground—they're "easy listening", answer all the questions they raise. His Violin Concerto is similar but has enough craft to rise slightly higher, I guess, so I do listen to it sometimes.

again - there is such a huge number of great symphonies written after 1910

Leaving out ones that come close but are fatally flawed (eg Nielsen 5, whose first movement is certainly great, but falls down in the second), and musical "dead ends" (eg Szymanowski 3—a great symphony, but neither the culmination of a tradition nor the start of one, I think), the number's not that high. It's not that high even with those.

Sibelius 5 & 7 (I prefer 6 over 5, but 6 is less great though more perfect)
Nielsen 6
Webern
possibly Zimmermann in einem Satz though I'm not sure I would have chosen it myself
Berio
Shostakovich 14
Gerhard 3
Simpson 9, arguably
Lutosławski 3
Malec Triola? maybe?
Dhomont Frankenstein
Ferrari Déchirée? I mean as an instrumental work by a composer whose greatest music is electronic it's more like the holiday-work of an artist, like Wagner's Album-Sonate für M.W., but it's still probably a better symphony than any others being written around the same decade, lol

Of course there are lots of second tier ones, "near greats" etc, that would be worth buying the recordings of... but I'm not going to make exaggerated claims for the importance of Nørgård or Maxwell Davies or Holmboe or Yun or idk. Similar to how in the much more symphony-rich 19th century there are plenty of also-rans worth occasional listens (Tchaikovsky 1-3, Mendelssohn 1 & 5, Taneyev 4...) without being on the level of Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, etc.

Notice also the lack of Rach 2

They suffer from under-exposure

There are tons of recordings. Even for pieces that really don't deserve them, like Copland's 3rd, which is neither a good symphony nor good kitsch >_>

I think most 20th century symphonies get approximately the exposure they deserve, apart from live performances, which are not worth much anyway—orchestras are basically dead on their feet due to lack of public funding. There's been very little worth going to symphony concerts for ever since Reagan/Thatcher/Gorbachev, and there likely won't be until the Revolution

[Cato]

Very difficult to choose as I like so many of those already mentioned but my top candidates would be:

Creston: Symphony 2

Kurka: Symphony 2

My brother has been a big advocate of Paul Creston.  (He is also a big fan of underdog Joachim Raff.)

Do you know The Good Soldier Schweik Suite ?

https://www.youtube.com/v/CWRdyOX4-cY

AMW wrote:

Leaving out ones that come close but are fatally flawed (eg Nielsen 5, whose first movement is certainly great, but falls down in the second), and musical "dead ends" (eg Szymanowski 3—a great symphony, but neither the culmination of a tradition nor the start of one, I think).

To my ears the Szymanowski Third Symphony contains DNA of Scriabin.  It could be argued that it is the culmination of Scriabin's style, or a variation on it.

Others have argued that certain microtonal composers, e.g. Wyschnegradsky, carried on the Scriabin tradition.  But Wyschnegradsky was not a symphonist.

https://www.youtube.com/v/UF23fvJHrXI

[Heck148]

Well we're talking about great symphonies.

so am I...your list of great symphonies post 1910 is so restricted, so limited as to be virtually meaningless...you leave out the Russian giants - Shostakovich, Prokofieff, the English - Vaughan Williams, Walton, no Penderecki, Roussel [#3]and of course, no mainstream Americans..I'm not sure what your criteria are for symphonic greatness - but there are works here that are easily the equal of Tchaikovsky 4,5 [I much prefer 1-3 anyway, they're better pieces], Mendelssohn, Schumann, Schubert as far as symphonic works of great impact and compositional artistry.

I think most 20th century symphonies get approximately the exposure they deserve, apart from live performances, which are not worth much anyway

they get nowhere near the exposure they deserve, esp compared to the wholesale over-exposure of some of the aforementioned warhorses...

[Scion7]

Well, let's remember that for many, the "warhorses" may be their first attendance to such a concert.  Let's not blame these great compositions for getting a lot of attention - rather, just lament that so very many great pieces of music don't get played because there just isn't an audience for them - ye olde butts-in-seats-syndrome.   Now if some of these filthy-rich multi-billionaires would put some effort into paying for performers and conductors and venues and thus having even low-attendance concerts available (and filmed for video release), it would be a more delightful world.

Maybe if Richard Bransom's fortune was appropriated by the state and used for such a purpose, eh wot?  (a deserving punishment for what happened at Virgin records around 1975 - the wankernacht.)

I'm afraid that the exciting times in America - back when Piston, Schuman, Barber, etc., were being premiered in-concert will probably never come back. 

So many strong American symphonies will have to be experienced via studio recordings unless something drastic happens - sometimes college orchestras put one on.

[amw]

Shostakovich is in there (or should be)—No. 14 is great, some of his symphonies are "near greats" (no. 4 and 15) but he spent so little time working on each piece that the great ones achieve that almost by accident? Nothing pejorative meant there, he was just insanely prolific, had to be for political reasons basically. Prokofiev's 6th is his best symphony and it's also flawed (though great, one could argue, because of its flaws). RVW & Walton are too derivative to be considered as greats, & Roussel misses the mark a bit in his symphonies though a fairly good composer otherwise—I haven't heard any Tchaikovsky tier works from him, haha, but as I recall the ballet scores are generally his best work. Penderecki only the 1st would be under consideration, the rest being pastiche, more or less. Great works generally have to be groundbreaking (Schubert D759 & 944) or the culmination/perfection of a particular style (Beethoven 1-8) or both (Beethoven 9)... and also to contain no or very few miscalculations (thus Symphonie Fantastique and not Roméo et Juliette).

If we include the great-but-flawed (ie with miscalculations) works we also have Nielsen 5, Shostakovich 4, Schnittke 8, Lutosławski 2, Tippett 2 & 3, and not very many more. Of the Americans, Ives 4 qualifies, I guess. If we include the dead ends (ie individual & original, but not new or culminatory) we have Szymanowski 3 & maybe 4 (though that's really a piano concerto), Stravinsky in C, Messiaen Turangalîla, and arguably Simpson 9 belongs here instead of mainlist. Of Americans I can't think of any, and I know a lot of American symphonies, mind.

Compared to, say, concertos—where the 20th century really is a heyday of sorts, or at least the great revival of the form after the Baroque—I don't think the same can be said for more than a few 20th century symphonies, most of which rehash 19th century rhetoric in a slightly more up-to-date musical language (or a completely out-of-date musical language, lol). Probably says something that the greatest 20th century symphony, by any metric except popularity, is Webern's, and it's about 10 minutes long.

@ Cato—That's true, I forgot Scriabin. I'm not sure if any of his symphonies would be great, maybe Poéme de l'extase, if that qualifies as symphony rather than tone poem. (Or Mysterium hahahaha) It would be flawed simply by his apparent difficulty in working in long forms though. Don't know if any of the Scriabin symphonies are post 1910—a cutoff I added mostly because of Mahler (5-9 have been highly influential and it's hard to dispute their greatness even if I don't like them much), but which accidentally ended up taking out Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie as well, the other greatest 20th century symphony.


Edit: If we forget about greatness and just go with "these are some American symphonies I like", the answers would be completely different. Of course, that's just list-making rather than actual discussion.

Edit 2: Carter 3 Orchestras might count as a Great American Dead End.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Probably says something that the greatest 20th century symphony, by any metric except popularity, is Webern's, and it's about 10 minutes long.

... Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie as well, the other greatest 20th century symphony.

This gets into the issue of personal taste, so I'm not going to dispute your choices here; but both of them strike me as very strange. If we polled people in the know (musicians, critics etc.), how many would name these as the 2 greatest 20th century symphonies? I have no idea, but I doubt it would be many. (and yes, I happen to like them both)

Therefore, I classify your interesting post as "great-but-flawed."

[amw]

That might be regional to an extent, though! In the music schools/departments I've been in those are likely to be popular answers, except for those who instead favour one of Mahler's. (And the performers, who will often name Shostakovich.) I'm often the outlier for thinking highly of composers like Rubbra and Tippett, even if I don't think they are "great". Many critics/musicologists/composers/etc I've encountered think the symphony died with Webern (if not Mahler), and there's been nothing in the genre since worth listening to. I think one could also judge based on influence and etc—the Webern symphony laid the groundwork for a lot of the longer-form serial/post-serial music that began to be composed around the 1940s by people like Boulez and Barraqué and went on as far as Stockhausen in the 2000s, but also was highly influential for the experimental/anti-serial composers of the 1960s onwards like Feldman and Cage, which in turn diversified into a lot of mini-movements in the 21st century that are still ongoing. I don't believe any other symphony is as important in the century, even Mahler's. As for Schoenberg his work is most valuable for its expansion & virtual redefinition of the genre: the first one-movement symphony, the first symphony not for orchestra, possibly the first symphony not to use traditional tonality. It opened the way for the wide variety of non-orchestral, non-tonal, non-rhetorical, non-classical etc symphonies that followed.

Lol at your classification though

[James]

Nevermind symphonies, I mean we can list probably less than 5 that reach the apex from Americans, but pale next to the Europeans .. perhaps we should try to list the very best written classical compositions by Americans thus far. The symphony form seems pretty dead at this point imo, never to compete with the best of earlier eras .. new forms is where it is at .. and that is why in the (particularly the 2nd half of the century) ... we have some truly outstanding pieces for a symphony orchestra, but the forms are new - but those aren't coming from Americans.

[Scion7]

" Many critics/musicologists/composers/etc I've encountered think the symphony died with Webern  " -

and I would bet there are at least twice as many that think this is just so much chamber pot refuse.

[James]

That Webern opus is one of the most profound pieces of harmonic writing ever put to paper by a composer .. but that piece wasn't responsible for it's slow demise. That's journalistic b.s. Time and all that has been done by the long line of geniuses of the past is the greatest enemy of all to the form in it's traditional sense; but the medium (the symphony orchestra) is still ripe for musical creativity  ..

[vandermolen]

My brother has been a big advocate of Paul Creston.  (He is also a big fan of underdog Joachim Raff.)

Do you know The Good Soldier Schweik Suite ?

https://www.youtube.com/v/CWRdyOX4-cY

AMW wrote:

To my ears the Szymanowski Third Symphony contains DNA of Scriabin.  It could be argued that it is the culmination of Scriabin's style, or a variation on it.

Others have argued that certain microtonal composers, e.g. Wyschnegradsky, carried on the Scriabin tradition.  But Wyschnegradsky was not a symphonist.

https://www.youtube.com/v/UF23fvJHrXI

Thanks Leo - I will listen to that and may have it on a Kurka CD. Glad your brother likes Creston - Symphony 2 is excellent. I am a great admirer of Raff's 'Leonore' Symphony, especially the ghostly night journey depicted in the last movement.

[Jo498]

I think one can agree that symphonies after Mahler (or Webern) were usually not cutting edge avantgarde anymore, but concede that the form remained an option in neo-classical style until 1940 or so: Stravinsky in C and 3 movements, Hindemith in E flat, Shostakovich, Hartmann. Or even later, e.g. some of Henze's.
(Not sure how this puts the "American symphony" in perspective. I know only a little (listened to Copland's 3rd last night, nice but I would not consider this "great") but it seems that at least Ives's 4th should be considered as an idiosyncratic but original and important piece (it's not post-Webern, though...)

[vandermolen]

I would rate Copland's Symphony 3 as great despite or because of its populist tendencies. However I would also rate William Schuman's Symphony 6. It is a grittier score than Schuman's better known Symphony 3. I have seen it described as 'a requiem for the 20th century'. I'd be interested to know what others thought of this work.

[Jo498]

Of course, these are all very flexible expressions. If I say that I didn't find Copland's 3rd "great", I do not mean that it is not worth being listened to once in a while. But I don't think that it is as impactful or impressive as e.g. Stravinsky's in three Movements.

[Scion7]

   I would also rate William Schuman's Symphony 6 . . . I'd be interested to know what others thought of this work.

There is very little of Bill Schuman that I don't like.  I like the chaotic brass passage at the seven minute mark in the Sixth.  Stirring stuff, that!
Just the thing for Chuck to sneak into mum's bedroom and take the "pause" off of with the volume all the way up.  His royal majesty the next day!   

[some guy]

I think one can agree that symphonies after Mahler (or Webern) were usually not cutting edge avantgarde anymore

I agree.

the form remained an option in neo-classical style

Made me grin. Symphony. Option. Neo-classical. Well, yeah.

Anyway, no one has said anything one way or the other about Z'ev's so-called Symphony #2, so I looked for a version online that you could play.

Here it is: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/ZEV/Symphony_2_Elementalities/

Broken up into movements, but plays them sweetly without pause. Or paws.

Not sure that really constitutes cutting-edge avant garde, either, but it's a nice piece.

I think that there may be some equivocal-ness about the whole "cutting-edge" business, which I fear I rather carelessly abetted in my last post. I don't think of music as being progressive; but I think that it is easy to tell when a piece (or a style) is regressive. Be fair, if you feel you've "heard it before," it's probably because you've heard it before. And it is, as the remark about "neo-classical" reveals, dead easy to write regressive music if what you're doing you're calling a symphony.

But it's not 100% sure, as Zimmermann and Dhomont and Z'ev have shown.

[Karl Henning]

Like finding the lack of a cutting edge to be "a flaw" in an exquisite spoon.

[Karl Henning]

Last year I went through a weeklong listening project of Piston, Creston, and Diamond symphonies, trying to figure out which ones I liked. There were a couple good ones.

I've only heard the Piston Second & Sixth, and should revisit them.  I seem to remember liking them, while perhaps not finding them "in competition with" the best of Mennin or Schuman.

The Diamond Fourth and Harris Third are all I know of either composer, and that is courtesy of the Lenny box.  Lenny was a fine ambassador for both symphonies.

Creston I know only from some minor band piece we must have played in a high school region band, and some Whitman settings for chorus & piano which Paul Cienniwa led at FCB.

(Just thinking out loud here.)