ABSTRACT
From its varied beginnings in the 1720s and 1730s that can be traced from the threemovement operatic overture, or ‘sinfonia’, the ripieno concerto, the orchestral suite and the trio sonata,1 the symphony became the premier genre of public orchestral music during the latter half of the eighteenth century.2 It provided the largest possible canvas in instrumental music for the use of sonata procedures and a basic framework of three or four movements. By the 1780s and 1790s, symphonies were featured in public concert series in Paris and London as exemplified by Haydn’s symphonies composed for Paris (82-92) and the Salomon concerts in London (93-104). Haydn’s late symphonies were acknowledged as the grandest exemplars of the form prior to 1800, later joined by the last four symphonies by Mozart dating from 1787 to 1788. Beethoven’s first two symphonies continued and maintained the scale of his Viennese predecessors but his later symphonies expanded symphonic discourse far beyond late eighteenth-century dimensions and power. The 50 minutes and 65 minutes respectively for the Third and Ninth Symphonies, the thematic interconnection between all movements in the Fifth and its progression from struggle to victory, the pictorial aspects of the Sixth and the colossal climaxes of the Ninth changed the aesthetic of the symphony from entertainment and diversion to an intense musical encounter that music-lovers shared together by attending public concerts. Although the meaning of the term ‘symphony’ had considerable fluidity, and was often interchangeable with the term ‘overture’ in both Britain and France,3 Beethoven’s symphonies created a paradigm for what a symphony was for the rest of the nineteenth century and probably longer.
