Symphonic Sonata Form

My 300th post on this blog!  Good to devote it to music..... A few weeks ago, I purchased a copy of BBC Music Magazine (Nov. 2011), for the article on Maurice Durufle, whose compositions (so few of them, sadly) are so lovely. My daughter's choir performed the Quatre Motets and the Requiem. 

But relaxing with this magazine, I also enjoyed the article, "What is a Symphony?" by Terry Blain. I learned something that any beginning music student would know but I didn't: symphonies are often structured by the "sonata form." "Basic sonata form [is] presenting contrasting musical themes in an exposition, comparing, contrasting, and extending them in a development, then renewing and summarising them in a recapitulation" (p. 34). Blain writes that Haydn and Mozart were pioneers in the development of this form. The form is so useful because of its adaptability: the ability to use the form to contrast, confront, and dialogue among different musical themes (p. 34).

Obviously different composers have different symphonic styles. Mahler wanted the symphony to "embrace everything," "like the world," while Sibelius (to whom Mahler described this desire) wrote more concentrated symphonies, though no less emotional and profound (pp. 32-33). Of course, different composers of symphonies have been able to use the symphony to express many things like tragedy (Tchaikovsky), comedy (Mozart), political dissent (Shostakovich), "muscular metaphysics"  (Beethoven), and others (p. 34). But some composers don't use the sonata form: Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is Blain's example. Recently I purchased Arvo Pärt's fourth symphony; I need to read the liner notes and learn what resources that innovative composer used.  Surely it's not the sonata form. 

Last night, my wife Beth and I attended a St. Louis Symphony concert featuring Bruckner's seventh. This reviewer, Chuck Lavazzi, notes that Bruckner's symphonies are often described in terms of Gothic cathedrals, "they so strongly suggest a connection between the material and ethereal plans---great blocks of sound alternating with moments of otherworldly beauty"  (http://kdhx.org/music/reviews/concert-review-sound-and-fury-with-berio-and-bruckner-by-the-st-louis-symphony-at-powell-hall-friday-and-saturday-november-18-and-19). And thus we see one of the most important of life's contrasts---the spiritual and material---expressed in a symphony.