Symphonies 𝄞

To watch the most popular symphony of the composer, just click on any image. The rest of the symphonies are beneath.

The word 'symphony' literally means "consonance" and was, much earlier, the consonance of various musical instruments/voices. Around 1700 the instrumental music became more and more important and the orchestra became larger which created the 'symphony' as we still know it: a composition for a (large) number of musical instruments in three or four parts that are separate from each other but nevertheless form a whole.

The symphony first had three parts in the order fast - slow - fast. Usually those parts were given Italian tempo indications: Allegro - Adagio - Allegro; later descriptions were sometimes added such as "Scene by the stream" or "Storm and storm". The eighteenth-century composers Haydn and Mozart added a dance-like Menuet to the symphony so that the symphony had four parts. A number that is actually still used, although the Menuet was increasingly replaced by a Scherzo (literally "joke"), a livelier and faster part. And while Haydn wrote no fewer than 104 symphonies, Beethoven would "only" compose nine. Beethoven's symphonies were, by the way, longer, more complex and, above all, more expressive: the beginnings of Romanticism.

A symphony orchestra is a group of musicians, say between 40 and 100 men and women, who usually play classical music together, such as symphonies, solo concerts and operas. In the eighteenth century the string instruments (violins, cellos, etc.) became increasingly important. These will group themselves together and form the core of the orchestra to which more and more wind instruments are being added. In the nineteenth century the orchestra continued to expand to the enormous occupations of Berlioz and Mahler. A conductor for it was therefore handy to steer everything in the right direction.

What kind of groups does a symphony orchestra consist of? A symphony orchestra usually has four main groups: strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion. Sometimes the orchestra is supplemented with a harp, piano or organ. All those musicians don't just sit somewhere. An orchestra is in a semicircular arrangement, with the conductor in the middle. In a large arc the strings are first placed, behind them in the middle the woodwinds such as clarinets, flutes and bassoons and to the left and right of them the brass instruments. At the very back you will find the percussion, such as timpani, big drum, triangle etc. There are different types of setups.

Symphonies 𝄞

Dmitri Sjostakovitsj

Wolfang Amadeus Mozart

Jean Sibelius

Pjotr Iljitsj Tchaikovsky

Johannes Brahms

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Anton Bruckner

Gustav Mahler

Antonín Dvořák

Ludwig van Beethoven

Max Bruch

Edward Elgar

Robert Schumann

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Sergej Prokofiev

Franz Schubert

Joseph Haydn

Hector Berlioz