table_arr = new Array(); row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]=''; row_arr[1]=''; table_arr[0] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

'; row_arr[2]='Ear play:

Pittsburgh Symphony'; row_arr[1]=' Paul Hindemith'; row_arr[2]='
1958 — Hindemith\'s last symphony is also his gnarliest. It seems to fit with the temper of the times more than his previous outings, and, on first listening, barely sounds Hindemithian at all! But it doesn\'t take many repeated hearings and you get the point. This is Hindemith after all. In three movements, the first is almost off-putting. It grows on you, though; or did me. The final movement concludes as if in homage to Ives\'s Second Symphony, with a treatment of a popular song, Pittsburgh is a Great Old Town, sounding exactly like the spiritual This Train, to me. But though this sort of comes out of left field, Hindemith had done this before. Check out the last movement of the Piano Concerto. Commissioned by the conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra of the time, Hindemith intended the symphony to celebrate the spirit of an industrial city, and its surrounding Pennsylvania Dutch communities. In the second movement a Pennsylvania Ductch tune is employed to great effect.'; table_arr[1] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphonia Serena'; row_arr[1]=' Paul Hindemith'; row_arr[2]='
1947 — Cheerful? Serene? How about sane? Playful-but-serious? Confident? I like it that Hindemith never numbered his symphonies. He named them. This is a comparatively obscure work, having received fewer performances than his two more famous opera symphonies (Mathis Der Maler and Harmonie Der Welt), and probably fewer performances than his two symphonies designated by key. But it\'s this work that I now admire most. It deserves study as well as repeated listenings. It is readily apparent that Hindemith was at top of his form, here. He is ingenious. What amazing development, what great textures, what surprising orchestral colors! The first movement is for full orchestra. The second, a metamorphosis on a theme by Beethoven, is for winds alone. The third, for strings, divided into two groups and contrasted with soloists. The fourth movement brings the whole orchestra back together, and revives a theme from the first movement. This is a joyous work, deserving not only to be c'; table_arr[2] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony Mathis der Maler'; row_arr[1]=' Paul Hindemith'; row_arr[2]='
1934 — Usually considered to be Hindemith\'s greatest orchestral work, this symphony is the emotional peak of the composer\'s symphonic output. The music is taken from his opera about the painter Matthias Grünewald. The opera has never quite caught on, but the symphony sure has. It is the best example of Hindemith\'s mature style, and an early one at that.'; table_arr[3] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony No. 2'; row_arr[1]=' John Harbison'; row_arr[2]='
A very colorful modernist/post-modernist masterwork of a symphony. In four movements played without interruption, it always holds one\'s interest, even if (for listeners not used to the complexities and refined gestures of modernism) you are not quite sure why it holds interest. This is difficult music for people who think they don\'t like difficult music. Really, it\'s not that difficult! Not to listen to, anyway.'; table_arr[4] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony No. 3'; row_arr[1]=' Einojuhani Rautavaara'; row_arr[2]='
1960 — The more I listen to this work, the more I admire it. I am not a Romantic by temper, and this is a very Romantic symphony, notwithstanding traces of dodecaphony. Rautavaara\'s quiet opening doesn\'t stay quiet, and that first movement really does pack a wallop. Most commentators mention Bruckner, and it is reminiscent of Bruckner, I guess, but do I notice Sibelian procedures of development? I\'ve not studied the score, so I can\'t adjudicate controversial matters like that, and I can\'t explain how something allegedly imbued with Schoenbergian serialism could be so tonal and tuneful. The opening woodwind glissandi becomes an important motif for the whole work, as near as I can make out, and, unlike in Schoenberg, we hear it repeated. We welcome it each time. This is one of the great Finnish symphonies, no matter what procedures or textures it echoes.'; table_arr[5] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Harmonielehre'; row_arr[1]=' John Adams'; row_arr[2]='
1985 — This is a symphony in all but name, and though the composer has written a number of other symphonies-in-all-but-name, this remains his best. The first movement somehow integrates High Romanticism with minimalism, with great force and eloquence. The second is a deeply sad, deeply moving slow movement, entitled The Anfortas Wound, apparently after Wagner\'s Parsifal, but also after the eponymous character, out of Arthurian legend. The final movement is a brilliant union of darkness and light, and light for Adams means playfulness and joy as well as triumph. A breathtakingly amazing work.'; table_arr[6] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony No. 7'; row_arr[1]=' Roy Harris'; row_arr[2]='
1955 — Roy Harris\'s symphonic output reaches its highest points in his two one-movement symphonies, the third and the seventh. In this, the seventh, similar procedures prove impressive. Harris somehow unites a disparate amount of mood and motif together, finding rhythmic impetus. At least, that\'s what\'s evident in Kuchar\'s performance with the National Orchestra of the Ukraine. None of the motivic and melodic material is as memorable as in the third symphony, but the handling is as good, and the overall effectc: impressive. This is a fine symphony.'; table_arr[7] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony No. 3'; row_arr[1]=' Roy Harris'; row_arr[2]='
By reputation and near-universal agreement, this is Roy Harris\'s best symphony. I agree. I go further: It is one of the greatest symphonies ever. Like Sibelius\'s Symphony No. 7, it is in one movement. And like that symphony, it develops from simpler motivic material, organically. The textures and orchestral use are brilliantly done; the themes, memorable . . . and excitingly developed. Leonard Bernstein was a major advocate of the work, and he was right to advocate it. It gets my vote as the greatest symphony composed by a home-grown American.'; table_arr[8] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

\"Vishnu,\" Symphony No. 19, Op. 217'; row_arr[1]=' Alan Hovhaness'; row_arr[2]='
1966 — This may be Hovhaness\'s greatest work. It is surely his most thoroughgoing use of aleatoric quasi-improvisation in senza misura . . . One of the great one-movement symphonies. An impressive statement, impossible to take lightly.'; table_arr[9] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony No. 4, Op. 91'; row_arr[1]=' Alexander Tcherepnin'; row_arr[2]='
1958 — This final symphony from Tcherepnin is my favorite. The lean textures, memorable motivic material, arresting developments — perfect Russian neo-classicism, no? And yet this simple symphony sums up a great deal of Tcherepnin\'s musical development, taking ideas from all his compositional periods and fusing them into a joyous whole. Spry, energetic, serious, playful, decisive. There\'s nothing \"lumbering\" here. It really is worth listening to over and over again. From what I can tell, most listeners prefer his Third, or \"Chinese\" Symphony. Well, I\'ve not taken to that yet, really. But the Fourth strikes me as perfection, a fine pinnacle to a great career in composition.'; table_arr[10] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony No. 1 in E major, Op. 42 '; row_arr[1]=' Alexander Tcherepnin'; row_arr[2]='
A great symphony, memorable opening, tautly constructed. Second movement is a percussion reprise of elements of the first, a breakthrough in 1927. The third movement is lovely, almost sublime. The last is a rousing if emotionally static conclusion. '; table_arr[11] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony No. 9, \"St. Vartan,\" Op. 180'; row_arr[1]=' Alan Hovhaness'; row_arr[2]='
1949–1950 — This symphony is to be found as a citation in the Guiness Book of World\'s Records for the symphony with the most number of movements: 24. These are not long movements, but short ones, and each features a subset of the orchestra, often of chamber music proportions. One might, then, be tempted to confine it to the non-symphonic realm, like most of us do his elegant and awesomely strange Mountains and Rivers Without End. But this is not a chamber work, really. And the separate short movements add up to a super-suite, and, as a mosaic, have a cumulative effect: so call it a symphony. But whatever you call it, listen to it. It is one of the stranger masterworks of 20th century genius. Hovhaness here celebrates a long-dead Armenians saint, and does so with some of his most original music. There is a solo saxophone movement, a love song, that will beguile you hours and days and perhaps years after hearing it. There are glorious dances and plaintive meditations. There are joys and sorrows and . . . in fine, interest in every instance, greatness in total effect.'; table_arr[12] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony No. 2, \"Mysterious Mountain,\" Op. 132'; row_arr[1]=' Alan Hovhaness'; row_arr[2]='
1955 — Like Igor Stravinsky, Hovhaness\'s greatest work is named as a symphony, but not a symphony at all. In Hovhaness\'s case, that work is the strange and wonderful Mountains and Rivers Without End (Op. 225), billed by the composer as a chamber symphony for ten players. I can\'t but help wanting to write about that work, though really my symphony list is not the place to do it. So I reach from his greatest work to his most popular work, also invoking the majesty and mystery of mountains, his second symphony, named Mysterious Mountain. This is a fairly early work, and was a great early success for him, having found champions in Leopold Stokowski and Fritz Reiner. There is a Renaissance flavor to much of the music, and it seems as though Hovhaness was dipping into some arcane and ancient hymnal for inspiration in the first and last of the work\'s three movements. In the central movement he dipped into his String Quartet No. 1 and fleshed out a great double fugue. The first theme is stately and simple; the second is a whirling dervish. When the two themes come together at the end of the movement, the listener is very happy that Hovhaness learned to ignore his critics. There is life in the old-fashioned, academic fugal form yet (critics be damned), and an artist of genius — and it strikes me that Hovhaness, for all his faults, was indeed that — can use old forms as well as new ones. Mysterious Mountain may seem far off and distant from the Asian and almost avant-gardish sensibilities of Hovhaness\'s middle-period music, typified by Mountains and Rivers Without End, but it too has a greatness in it, and justifies the vaunting audacity of suggesting that a symphony can be some sort of match for a mountain. It can. Hovhaness proved it.'; table_arr[13] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony No. 50, \"Mount St. Helens,\" Op. 360'; row_arr[1]=' Alan Hovhaness'; row_arr[2]='
1982 — Hovhaness took inspiration from mountains, and celebrated them in numerous works. The Mount St. Helens Symphony is among the most memorable of these celebrations. Before 1980, the Washington state mountain marked the skyline of that green forested land, a land that Hovhaness called home during the last thirty years or so of his life. He knew how beautiful the mountain had been, and honors that beauty with an opening movement that is shameless in its attempt to inspire in us the word lovely; it is breathtakingly beautiful music. The second movement is called Spirit Lake, for the resort area that attracted people from all over the world to revel in the beauty of the mountain. This movement has a more Asian feel, and evokes the reflecting lake with a sense of mystery. And then, the final movement takes on the violent 1980 eruption of the volcano, in a long segment featuring bass drums and trombone glissandi and the whole orchestra marching to a devilish, chthonian beat. But the eruption wasn\'t the whole story of the mountain, and Hovhaness wouldn\'t let it stop there. He ends, as he often ends his music, with hymn-like exaltation. A fitting end for this program symphony, and it provides a sense of unity, of return to past beauty. Thus, it is a fitting end to the work as a symphony proper, too. '; table_arr[14] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony of Psalms'; row_arr[1]=' Igor Stravinsky'; row_arr[2]='
1930 — Stravinsky\'s greatest achievement may very well be mistaken for a symphony: his oddly named single-movement Symphonies of Wind Instruments. The choral work Symphony of Psalms is nearly as great, and is more nearly a symphony proper. It is in three movements, and because of its musical integrity and formal perfection, it narrowly sneaks into the category of the symphony, and there holds its own. The chorus sings Latin texts from the Vulgate, in solemn homophony, while the pared-down orchestra (no high strings, no clarinets) performs in a generally contrapuntal manner. The opening is unforgettable. The impression made by the whole work quite singular. It is one of the greatest of religiously inspired works, and yet it stands apart. It is one of the most amazing creations in the history of music, and is Stravinsky\'s greatest symphony, or sounding together. Not counting, of course, the sounding together of his Symphonies of Wind Instruments. '; table_arr[15] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony in Three Movements'; row_arr[1]=' Igor Stravinsky'; row_arr[2]='
1945 — Arguably, this work is a Sinfonia concertante, or concerto for orchestra. The first movement has a prominent part for piano, the second movement, for harp. The final movement lets both concertante instruments work together. Because of the instrumentation, and because of the vigor of the outer movements, this work fondly recalls Stravinsky\'s great early ballets, Petrouchka and Le sacre du printemps. But the neoclassical feel of the work remains present, and helps unify material that Stravinsky had composed for several different purposes. Unlike the Symphony in C, this work holds together quite well, and is a little masterpiece — not his greatest work, perhaps, but a symphony worth repeated listenings and no small amount of praise. '; table_arr[16] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony No. 2'; row_arr[1]=' Charles Ives'; row_arr[2]='
1900–1902, 1907–1910 — Americanist but more Romantic than his equally Americanist Third Symphony, this work takes Stephen Foster tunes, Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, the revival hymn Bringing in the Sheaves, and a whole lot more to make an infectious romp. The music is not noticeably dissonant (until the very end), and thus seems of its time at the turn of the century. But though he adheres to the letter of the laws of respectable consonance, he flauts the spirit: this music was not to be too dignified (as, arguably, his student work in his first symphony, is), and Ives lets more than a taste of gaucherie creep into the whole affair. And that makes it all the more memorable! The fifth and final movement takes Foster\'s Camptown Races, the Reveille, Wake Nicodemus, Pig Town Fling and Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, and races to a breakneck conclusion, ending with an eleven-note dissonant blat of a fanfare. Ives tacked this on years after completing the work, but it really helps sell the whole concoction, and is a stroke of genius. I don\'t know how you can\'t be smiling after listening to this great weird romp! (Note: Bernstein\'s first recording of this symphony is far, far better than his later performance. Unfortunately, the last I checked that first performance of the Second Symphony was paired with a terrible performance of the Third. You\'ll just have to buy duplicate performances.)'; table_arr[17] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony No. 3, \"Camp Meeting\"'; row_arr[1]=' Charles Ives'; row_arr[2]='
1904 — The first great work in the Americanist vein that Virgil Thomson, Aaron Copland, and Roy Harris perfected and popularized later on. A perfect companion to the great Americanist Third symphonies of Harris and Copland, this is nevertheless far quirkier, as one should expect of Ives. It does not engage in any overt radicalism, however, and can pass, today, as almost traditional music. But it is not. Still, Ives has great respect for the traditions of the folk of his day, and appropriates a great deal of American folk, popular, patriotic, and hymnody into his post-tonal mix. Very, very good, though many performances miss the symphony\'s coherence, and end in disaster.'; table_arr[18] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony No. 4'; row_arr[1]=' Charles Ives'; row_arr[2]='
1910–1916 — The perfect summation to Charles Ives proto-postmodernist emprise! This work for orchestra, spatially distanced chamber group, choir, and optional (but much appreciated) theremin, is the perfect work for the serious listener to confront Ives at his most audacious and successful. The first movement is a maestoso reworking of a 19th century hymn, Watchman, Tell Us of the Night. It breaks off strangely, and then begins a chaotic scherzo in Ives\'s multi-level cacophonous style, complete with hymns, patriotic tunes, background fiddling, and fight songs. The third movement is an orchestral reworking of a double fugue from the Revival String Quartet, and it is a reworking of genius. From Greenland\'s Icy Mountains and All Hail the Power get a Romantic-nationalist treatment in studied and ingenious counterpoint, with Joy to the World thrown in as epiphany. Austere, moving, lovely, sublime. And then Ives pulls out all the stops. The fourth and final movement is the work that he himself thought his best, and he was right. I won\'t describe it, but will just say that the method of layering used in the second movement here goes not to play but to reverential Transcendantalism. This is nonpareil. Four utterly different movements, and yet they all work together. Ives\'s aesthetic could encompass more than any other composer could. This is his greatest statement.'; table_arr[19] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

Symphony No. 4, Op. 49'; row_arr[1]=' Aulis Sallinen'; row_arr[2]='
1979 — This is the symphonic masterpiece that Bernard Herrmann never wrote. OK, that\'s unfair. But really, every time I listen to this work, I think of Herrmann\'s great music for Hitchcock. But Herrmann\'s absolute music rarely works. This symphony, by one of Finland\'s several great living composers, works on several levels. Very accessible, if not extraverted or playful. It is just perfect. That\'s enough, eh?'; table_arr[20] = row_arr; row_arr = new Array();row_arr[0]='

¤ by myMediaList
¤ Get Your Own Free List!'; row_arr[1]='

'; table_arr[21] = row_arr; for (i=0; i < table_arr.length; i++){ for (j=0; j < table_arr[i].length; j++){ document.writeln(table_arr[i][j]) } };