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The purpose of this post is so that I can link to it to explain a long-term learning project I am engaged with.

I am making a tour of the world of the symphony as I read Michael Steinberg’s The Symphony: A Listener’s Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Pres­s, 1995), which consists primarily of program notes originally written for the Boston and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras. The book includes short chapters about the 118 symphonies (from 36 composers) he chose to include.

I don’t know if Steinberg would call these the 118 best symphonies. What I do know is that while the symphonies are listed in numerical order by composer in alphabetical order, in his introduction Steinberg refers to both the “necessaries” (for example, Beethoven’s Nine and Brahms’s Four among others that “take a lot of room”) and the “electives,”  by which we may conclude that while this is a sort of canon, all of the symphonies are not on equal footing and others writing a book on the symphony might have a different list.

Originally I planned simply to read the book, which would be fine with works that I know well (Elgar’s Symphony No. 1 and many by Mahler and Beethoven, for example), but as I considered the idea of reading about music for which I had no aural reference, I realized I needed to expand the scope of things a bit so that in addition to reading about a particular symphony (whether familiar or not) I would also listen to it and reflect on the experience.

As I write blog posts about each particular symphony, I don’t want to continually explain the nature of this project. Instead, I’ll link to this post.

This project is going to take a while, which is just fine because I have a tracking system.

As part of my study I’m creating a chart of the symphonists (see First Performance Dates) to help me visualize when some of these things happened. It’s a work in progress and tends to lag a bit behind the blog.

Beethoven
☑ Symphony No. 1 | Study #11
☑ Symphony No. 2 | Study #12
☑ Symphony No. 3, Eroica | Study #13
☑ Symphony No. 4 | Study #14
☑ Symphony No. 5 | Study #16
☑ Symphony No. 6, Pastoral | Study #17
☑ Symphony No. 7 | Study #18
☑ Symphony No. 8 | Study #19
☑ Symphony No. 9 | Study #20

Berlioz
☑ Symphonie fantastique | Study #21

Brahms
☑ Symphony No. 1 | Study #49
☐ Symphony No. 2
☐ Symphony No. 3
☐ Symphony No. 4

Bruckner
☑ Symphony No. 4, Romantic | Study #31
☑ Symphony No. 5 | Study #40
☑ Symphony No. 6 | Study #44
☑  Symphony No. 7 | Study #46
☐ Symphony No. 8
☐ Symphony No. 9

Copland
☑ Short Symphony (No. 2) | Study # 55

Dvořák
☑ Symphony No. 6 | Study #29
☑ Symphony No. 7 | Study #50
☑ Symphony No. 8 | Study #51
☑ Symphony No. 9, From the New World | Study #52

Elgar
☑ Symphony No. 1 | Study #1
☑ Symphony No. 2 | Study #38

Górecki
☑ Symphony No. 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs | Study #54

Hanson
☐ Symphony No. 4, Requiem

Harbison
☐ Symphony No. 2

Hartmann
☑ Adagio (Symphony No. 2) | Study #10
☑ Symphony No. 8 | Study #58

Haydn
☐ Symphony No. 45, Farewell
☑ Symphony No. 64, Tempora mutantur | Study #48
☐ Symphony No. 86
☑ Symphony No. 88 | Study #2
☑ Symphony No. 92, Oxford | Study #9
☐ Symphony No. 93
☐ Symphony No. 94, Surprise
☐ Symphony No. 95
☐ Symphony No. 96
☐ Symphony No. 97
☐ Symphony No. 98
☐ Symphony No. 99
☐ Symphony No. 100, Military
☐ Symphony No. 101, Clock
☑ Symphony No. 102 | Study #15
☐ Symphony No. 103, Drum Roll
☐ Symphony No. 104

Hindemith
☑ Symphony, Mathis der Maler | Study #53

Honegger
☐ Symphonie liturgique (No. 3)
☐ Symphony No. 5, Di tre re

Ives
☑ Symphony No. 4 | Study #30

Mahler
☐ Symphony No. 1
☐ Symphony No. 2, Resurrection
☑  Symphony No. 3 | Study #47
☐ Symphony No. 4
☐ Symphony No. 5
☐ Symphony No. 6
☐ Symphony No. 7
☐ Symphony No. 8
☐ Symphony No. 9

Martinů
☑ Fantaisies symphoniques (No. 6) | Study #56

Mendelssohn
☑ Symphony No. 3, Scotch | Study #57
☑ Symphony No. 4, Italian | Study #43

Mozart
☑ Symphony No. 35, Haffner | Study #32
☑ Symphony No. 36, Linz | Study #33
☑ Symphony No. 38, Prague | Study #34
☑ Symphony No. 39 | Study #35
☑ Symphony No. 40 | Study #36
☑ Symphony No. 41, Jupiter | Study #37

Nielsen
☑ Symphony No. 4, The Inextinguishable | Study #59
☐ Symphony No. 5
☐ Symphony No. 6

Piston
☐ Symphony No. 2
☐ Symphony No. 6

Prokofiev
☐ Classical Symphony (No. 1)
☐ Symphony No. 5
☐ Symphony No. 6

Rachmaninoff
☑ Symphony No. 2 | Study #4
☐ Symphony No. 3

Schmidt
☑ Symphony No. 4 | Study #3

Schoenberg
☐ Chamber Symphony No. 1

Schubert
☐ Unfinished Symphony
☐ Great C-major Symphony

Schuman
☐ Symphony No. 3
☐ Symphony No. 6

Schumann
☐ Symphony No. 1, Spring
☐ Symphony No. 2
☐ Symphony No. 3, Rhenish
☐ Symphony No. 4

Sessions
☐ Symphony No. 2

Shostakovich
☑  Symphony No. 1 | Study #45
☐ Symphony No. 4
☐ Symphony No. 5
☐ Symphony No. 7, Leningrad
☐ Symphony No. 8
☐ Symphony No. 10
☐ Symphony No. 15

Sibelius
☑ Symphony No. 1 | Study #22
☑ Symphony No. 2 | Study #23
☑ Symphony No. 3 | Study #24
☑ Symphony No. 4 | Study #25
☑ Symphony No. 5 | Study #26
☑ Symphony No. 6 | Study #27
☑ Symphony No. 7 | Study #28

Stravinsky
☐ Symphony in C
☐ Symphony in Three Movements

Tchaikovsky
☑ Symphony No. 4 | Study #39
☑ Symphony No. 5 | Study #41
☑ Symphony No. 6, Pathétique | Study #42

Tippett
☐ Symphony No. 2
☐ Symphony No. 4

Vaughan Williams
☑ Symphony in F minor (No. 4) | Study #6
☑ Symphony in D major (No. 5) | Study #7
☑ Symphony in E minor (No. 6) | Study #8

Walton
☑ Symphony No. 1 | Study #5