BRITISH/IRISH (change for your list as you see fit)
1st Moeran (but not really his first, rather his only)
2nd Elgar
3rd Stanford
4th Britten (Simple Symphony)
5th Parry
6th Vaughan Williams
7th Bax
FOREIGN
1st Brahms (Beethoven's 10th as it has unkindly been called at times)
2nd Bruch
3rd Beethoven (Eroica)
4th Mahler
5th Schuman (Symphony for Strings)
6th Tchaikovsky (Pathétique)
7th Bruckner
8th Schubert (Unfinished)
9th Dvorak (New World)
10th Shostakovich
25th Mozart
104th Haydn (London)
Last edited by PeterG; 02-25-2014 at 10:29 AM.
9th - Beethoven by a mile
4th, 5th - Tchaikovsky
6th - Beethoven again
8th and I believe 11th or 12th? - Shostakovich
3rd - Panufnik
Most 1st symphonies are dicy at best
1st: Copland
2nd: Borodin
3rd: Saint Saens
4th: Bruckner
5th: Mahler
6th: Nielsen
7th: Bax (I concur)
As you can tell by my number 1 and 3 choices, I'm very partial to the organ.
"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama
Never heard that before... ouch!Originally Posted by PeterG
Though Brahms was obviously influenced by Beethoven; I think he took the ball and ran onto a different field with it, and it's in evidence even on his 1st symphony. But my favorite is his 4th.
Oy, how could I forget? Excellent call.
1st Howard Hanson
2nd Rachmaninov
3rd Mahler, maybe Copland or Saint-Saens
4th Nielsen
5th Shostakovich
6th Dvorak
7th Vaughan Williams
8th Bruckner
9th Beethoven
Top 5 in numerical order:
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
I forget who wrote 'em.
Why am I not surprised it was our PeterG who started this?
Last edited by Dave (in MA); 02-25-2014 at 06:07 PM.
1st-Elgar
2nd-Brahms
3rd-Bruckner
4th-Mahler
5th-Beethoven
6th-Mahler
7th-Bruckner
8th-Bruckner
9th-Bruckner
10th-Shostakovitch
"and what music unites, man should not take apart"-Helmut Koellen
Why aren't you surprised Dave?
Because it's a list.
A list of numbers.
I thought there was some tradition where no one after Beethoven wrote a symphony past number 9 out of respect. I guess that didn't last forever. Lol.
Do not suffer through the game of chance that plays....always doors to lock away your dreams (To Be Over)
1st-Ives/Schnittke
2nd-Lutoslawski/Dutilleux
3rd-Nielsen
4th-Ives/Schuman/Honegger/Lutoslawski
5th-Shostakovich
6th-Schuman/Beethoven
7th-Schuman/Henze
8th-Schnittke
9th-Schuman/Mahler/Bruckner
10th-Schuman/Henze/Mahler
11th-Aho
Aah, you know me so well
Never heard of that, and there is no support for it either.
The American William Schuman of course as opposed to the more famous German Robert Schumann (double-n) who wrote just 4 symphonies. I often forget about W. Schuman and simply don't listen to his stuff enough. Wonderful music.
Something unusual, for me anyway, with 3 & 6 is that my fav symphs by the same 3 geezers are their 3rd & 6th symphs.
Vaughan Williams, Tchiaikovsky, Beethoven
1 - Mahler
2 - Stravinsky (Symphony In C)
3 - Beethoven
4 - Ives
5 - Beethoven
6 - Beethoven
7 - Beethoven
8 - Schubert
9 - Beethoven
10 - Shostakovich
Long Piece #3
Hovhaness was obviously the most disrespectful post Beethoven composer because he wrote 67 of them.
"Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama
1st - Prokoffiev (the "Classical" Symphony), best S#1 by far.
2nd - Sibelius
3rd - Sibelius
4th - Brahms
5th - Shostakovich
6th - Beethoven
7th - Sibelius
8th - Shubert
9th - Beethoven
More of a superstition. It's supposed to be the reason Mahler didn't call Das Lied von der Erde his Ninth Symphony--he was afraid that like Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, and some others, his Ninth would be his last. Turns out he was pretty much right.
Tell that to my history of western music teacher. I'm pretty sure that's where I heard it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_ninth
Do not suffer through the game of chance that plays....always doors to lock away your dreams (To Be Over)
Shostakovich lived to write many more - but he had to do so in Stalinist Russia, so it's possibly debateable whether that counts as escaping the curse.
Very interesting, but like I said, I've never heard of it (not that my experience counts for much in the scheme of things) or read of it in books on classical music & I've read quite a few.
But like the article says, there is as much that speaks against as for it.
Also remember that, only two "Classical" (period) composers before him, namely, Mozart and Haydn were big symphony composers. The symphony was quite a new format which took off in that period, and most of the classical composers of the Classical, Romantic and Nationalistic periods were focusing on other formats. Schuman for example only wrote 4, many others only wrote 1 or 2, but most composers wrote NONE! so getting up to nine had more to do with Beethoven's prolificsm and his connexion backwards to the late Baroque and early Classical of Mozart and Haydn and was as such not truly representative of his period nor of the period after his death, which I think is what gave ground to the superstition. Beethoven really was the link between the old and the new.
For the record I also got a One in the History of Culture and Ideas (which included music and all the other arts) but I never taught it, however 2 of my papers were used for the teaching of subsequent classes
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