Find songs

The 1812 Overture commemorates Russia's resistance to Napoleon's invasion through a staged confrontation of musical materials. A hymn-like opening gives way to battle music, recognizable national associations, bells,...

Chopin's twenty-four preludes make a complete collection of brief pieces in all major and minor keys. Each establishes its own concentrated texture or gesture rather than introducing a following fugue. The set...

Bliss organized A Colour Symphony into four movements named Purple, Red, Blue and Green, drawing on the symbolic associations of heraldic colours. Written for the Three Choirs Festival, the work uses orchestral...

Liszt organized his Faust Symphony as musical portraits of Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles, drawing on Goethe's drama. Themes undergo transformation between the movements; Mephistopheles distorts material already...

Vaughan Williams developed A London Symphony with encouragement from George Butterworth, to whose memory it was later dedicated. Westminster chimes and street sounds are woven into a four-movement orchestral design....

Vaughan Williams developed the Pastoral Symphony from impressions gathered during his wartime service in France. Its four movements are predominantly restrained, and a wordless voice frames the finale. The second...

Vaughan Williams uses poems by Walt Whitman in a four-movement symphony for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra. Voices participate throughout the work, not only in its conclusion. Sea imagery expands into...

Liszt organized his Dante Symphony around Inferno and Purgatorio, drawing its subject directly from the Divine Comedy. The second part leads into a choral Magnificat, adding voices to the orchestra at the close. The...

Ives brought together four orchestral holiday portraits: Washington's Birthday, Decoration Day, The Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day. Hymns, marches and overlapping layers evoke remembered...

Barber adapted the slow movement of his String Quartet for string orchestra, and Toscanini introduced that version in a 1938 broadcast. A single stepwise idea passes through the ensemble, gradually expanding its...

Strauss's tone poem begins with a sunrise gesture but continues through a much larger sequence of contrasting musical episodes. Titles drawn from Nietzsche's book suggest philosophical questions rather than a...

Strauss's Alpine Symphony follows a mountain journey across twenty-two connected sections, from night and sunrise through ascent, summit, storm, and return to darkness. Despite the title, its design is a continuous...

Gounod places a new singing melody above the flowing harmony of Bach's C-major prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier. The familiar vocal version sets the Latin Ave Maria prayer. Its identity therefore involves two...

Chopin's final ballade gives a recurring lyrical idea increasingly elaborate treatment. New textures, inner voices, and contrapuntal combinations transform the theme as the music develops, before a compressed and...

Ravel built Bolero around an almost unchanging rhythmic accompaniment and repeated melodic material. Its development comes chiefly from orchestration and a long increase in volume. The piece originated as a ballet...

Bach sent these six concertos to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, in 1721. Each uses a different instrumental combination, making the group a survey of ensemble possibilities rather than six versions of the...

Pachelbel's Canon combines imitating upper voices with a repeating bass pattern. The three violin lines enter successively and then become more active over the same harmonic foundation. It survives alongside a gigue,...

Carmen centers on a woman determined to choose her own life and on Don Jose's increasingly destructive jealousy. Bizet's score places memorable solo numbers within a tightly connected drama of work, public...

Orff selected medieval poems for a large secular cantata whose subjects include fortune, spring, drinking, and love. Repetition, direct melodic writing, and strongly defined rhythms give the music its theatrical...

Dvorak's B-minor concerto gives the orchestra an unusually substantial partnership with the cello. Written during his American period, it includes a quotation from one of his songs associated with Josefina Kounicova,...

Elgar's Cello Concerto opens with an exposed solo declaration, giving the cello an immediate dramatic presence. Four movements contrast broad reflection with quicker, more fragile activity, and music from earlier in...

Bantock's Celtic Symphony is written for divided strings with six harps available as an optional additional colour. Its continuous form incorporates a Hebridean melody associated with longing for the sea. The many...

Mahler called Das Lied von der Erde a symphony for voices and orchestra. Its six movements set German adaptations of Chinese poems, moving between exuberant public gestures and more solitary reflections on nature and...

Wagner's Ring comprises four linked music dramas whose story follows a struggle over power, promises, and a gold ring. Recurring musical ideas connect characters, objects, and changing situations across an...

Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte treat the Don Juan story through an unstable mixture of comedy, social conflict, and supernatural judgment. Servants and aristocrats pursue different plans while the central character...

Bach gives the two solo violins closely interwoven parts rather than separating them into a leader and an accompanist. The slow movement is especially distinctive: one violin begins a long melody that the other takes...

Eine kleine Nachtmusik is a string serenade whose familiar opening combines a forceful arpeggio with an immediate answering gesture. Its surviving movements include a Romanze, minuet and trio, and a lively finale....

Chopin's two sets of twelve etudes make technical study inseparable from musical character. Different pieces concentrate on arpeggios, chromatic motion, double notes, wide spans, or the independence of the hands, yet...

Fur Elise is a short piano work built around a returning refrain and contrasting episodes. The famous opening alternates two neighboring notes before settling into A minor. It was not published during Beethoven's...

An aria frames thirty variations that explore changing meters, textures, and contrapuntal techniques. Rather than simply decorating the melody, Bach repeatedly reworks its underlying harmonic plan. The original...

The Grosse Fuge began as the last movement of Beethoven's Op. 130 quartet. Its scale and technical demands helped prompt publication as a separate work with a replacement finale for the quartet. Several contrasting...

Berlioz's Harold in Italy places a recurring viola theme within four orchestral scenes. Paganini had asked for a work featuring his viola, but Berlioz made the soloist more of an observer than a continuously dominant...

Brahms's Hungarian Dances began as piano-duet arrangements shaped by the performance traditions he encountered through violinist Ede Remenyi. They alternate flexible, slower gestures with more animated dance rhythms....

Liszt's nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies draw on dance idioms and, in many pieces, existing melodies. The last additions include works built from his own motifs. Many explore the contrast between slower, flexible...

Puccini's four-act opera follows young artists and their relationships in nineteenth-century Paris. The warmth and bustle of shared life contrast with the increasing fragility of Mimi and Rodolfo's love. Giuseppe...

La mer presents three orchestral sketches that explore changing motion, light, and energy associated with the sea. Debussy gives harmony, texture, and instrumental color structural roles alongside recognizable...

Verdi and librettist Francesco Maria Piave adapted a contemporary drama for an opera centered on Violetta, a courtesan, and Alfredo, the man who loves her. Public festivity gives way to increasingly private conflict...

Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony joins seven settings of poems by Rabindranath Tagore in German translation. Soprano and baritone alternate and interact with the orchestra, tracing changing perspectives on love and...

Tchaikovsky built this four-movement symphony around Byron's dramatic poem Manfred, using a programme proposed by Mily Balakirev. Its scenes move from the solitary protagonist in the Alps to a mountain fairy,...

Bach's Mass in B Minor gathers music from different stages of his career into a setting of the Latin Mass. The Kyrie and Gloria existed earlier, and several later sections adapt music first heard in other contexts....

Handel's Messiah uses a scriptural compilation by Charles Jennens rather than a conventional dramatic plot. Solo recitatives and arias alternate with choruses across three large parts concerned with Christian...

Chopin developed the piano nocturne into a flexible form of lyrical expression, building on the example of John Field. Singing upper lines can be richly ornamented while the accompaniment shifts their harmonic...

Debussy used the title Nocturnes to suggest impressions and effects of light rather than the familiar piano genre. Nuages, Fetes, and Sirenes offer three distinct scenes: drifting clouds, animated festivity, and an...

Ravel's pavane imagines an old courtly dance through a restrained modern piano texture. The title does not commemorate a particular dead princess; Ravel associated it with the kind of dance a young princess might...

Grieg first wrote incidental music for Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, then selected movements for two orchestral suites. The concert order creates a different experience from the full drama: contrasting landscapes, dances,...

Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto opens with broad orchestral melody and massive accompanying piano chords, an introduction that is distinct from the main argument that follows. After a discouraging response from...

Brahms's Second Piano Concerto expands the usual three-movement concerto into four substantial movements. A horn call invites an early piano response, while the added scherzo contributes exceptional weight to the...

Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto combines broad orchestral melodies with a piano part that alternates between solo prominence and flowing accompaniment. The opening sequence of piano chords gradually introduces...

Mozart's D-minor concerto opens with restless orchestral motion before the soloist introduces a contrasting idea. It is one of only two of his original piano concertos in a minor key. The central Romance creates a...

Mozart's C-major concerto sets a ceremonial orchestral manner beside delicate exchanges with the piano. The famous slow movement is only one part of a work whose outer movements are more animated and dramatic. Like...

Mozart gives this A-major concerto a particularly warm wind sound by using clarinets in the ensemble. Its lyrical first movement is followed by a slow movement in F-sharp minor, an unusual key in his output. The...

Beethoven begins his final piano concerto with orchestral chords answered by sweeping solo flourishes, immediately giving the piano a commanding presence. He then builds a broad first movement, a restrained slow...

Beethoven called both Op. 27 sonatas sonatas in the manner of a fantasy, suggesting freedom within the established genre. This C-sharp-minor work begins with a slow movement, continues with a brief Allegretto, and...

The Appassionata contrasts a quiet, unsettled opening with abrupt force, wide keyboard spacing, and carefully placed silences. A central variations movement provides a different kind of concentration before leading...

Beethoven's last piano sonata has only two movements, but their contrast creates a substantial whole. A turbulent C-minor movement follows a weighty introduction. The second movement turns to C major for an Arietta...

Mussorgsky responded to a memorial exhibition of works by his friend Viktor Hartmann with a sequence of musical pictures. Recurring Promenade passages suggest movement between exhibits, while the individual scenes...

Debussy's prelude responds freely to Mallarme's poem about a faun's memories and desires during a hot afternoon. A winding flute phrase opens a score in which harmony, color, and recurring fragments create a...

Mozart's final Requiem survives as a mixture of completed music, unfinished sections, and additions made after his death. The commission was associated with Count Franz von Walsegg's memorial for his wife. Constanze...

Faure's Requiem developed through successive versions rather than appearing as one fixed orchestral score. Its restrained choral writing and prominent solo passages emphasize repose, while the final In paradisum...

Gershwin wrote Rhapsody in Blue for Paul Whiteman's concert experiment combining popular idioms with concert music. The first performance featured Gershwin at the piano and Ferde Grofe's orchestration for jazz band....

Prokofiev's complete ballet turns Shakespeare's tragedy into a large sequence of sharply characterized dances and dramatic scenes. Heavy public music for Verona's rival households contrasts with the lovers' more...

Scheherazade draws on the world of The Thousand and One Nights, contrasting commanding orchestral gestures with an expressive solo violin. Rimsky-Korsakov did not intend every recurring theme to function as a fixed...

Bach's six cello suites develop dance forms into substantial unaccompanied instrumental works. A prelude leads into a sequence of dances whose contrasting rhythms provide different kinds of movement. The instrument...

Dvorak's two sets of Slavonic Dances use the rhythmic characters of regional dances while supplying his own melodies. The first set draws mainly on Czech models; the second broadens the range to other Slavic dance...

Bach's St Matthew Passion combines the Gospel account of Jesus's suffering with reflective arias, chorales, and large choral movements. The Evangelist narrates while other singers take dramatic roles. Two choral and...

Beethoven links seven movements into an unusually continuous quartet. A slow fugue begins the work, while a long central variations movement provides one of its main points of balance. Brief connecting movements and...

Schubert's D-minor quartet takes its familiar name from the slow movement, whose variations use material from his song Death and the Maiden. That quotation sits within a four-movement work of forceful rhythms and...

Shostakovich's Eighth Quartet connects five movements through recurring material, especially the four-note musical signature associated with his initials. Quotations from his earlier works give the piece a strongly...

Swan Lake was Tchaikovsky's first full-length ballet commission. Its score connects the human world of Prince Siegfried with the enchanted world of Odette and the swans through recurring orchestral ideas and...

Berlioz organized this five-movement symphony around a written story of an artist's obsession and increasingly disturbing visions. A recurring melody represents the beloved and changes character with each situation....

Herrmann composed this concert symphony during the period when his work for radio was helping establish his wider reputation. He conducted its first broadcast performance with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra in 1941....

Hindemith shaped this three-movement symphony while working on his opera about the painter Matthias Grunewald. The movements correspond to images associated with the Isenheim Altarpiece: an angelic concert, an...

Schubert's B-minor symphony has two completed movements whose balance has made them a familiar concert work. A dark low-string opening leads into lyrical themes with distinctive wind colors, while the second movement...

Stravinsky began this symphony in France and completed it after moving to the United States. Its four movements adopt familiar symphonic outlines while reshaping their rhythms, phrase lengths and instrumental...

Bizet wrote the Symphony in C as a seventeen-year-old student at the Paris Conservatoire. It was neither published nor performed during his lifetime, and its modern concert history began in 1935. The four-movement...

Wagner's C-major Symphony is an early orchestral work from before the music dramas that dominate his later reputation. Its four movements follow the symphonic tradition he knew through Beethoven, including a slow...

Schubert's Great C-major symphony opens with a horn melody whose material becomes part of a much larger orchestral argument. Its four movements sustain unusual breadth through recurrent rhythms, long melodic spans,...

Kraus recast an earlier symphony in C-sharp minor as this C-minor work, enlarging and revising its orchestral conception. A slow introduction opens a three-movement design, with an Andante between the two faster...

Vorisek's D-major Symphony is a four-movement orchestral work by a composer active in early nineteenth-century Vienna. It combines a substantial opening Allegro with an Andante, scherzo and finale. The work sits near...

Boccherini's D-major work is also described as an overture in surviving score sources. Three connected sections follow a fast-slow-fast plan, bringing the work close to the Italian sinfonia tradition. Its...

Franck compressed the functions of a conventional four-movement symphony into three movements. The central movement combines a songlike English-horn theme with scherzo-like activity. Earlier themes return in the...

Rott completed this large orchestral work while still a young musician in Vienna. It remained outside the concert repertory for more than a century, receiving its first complete performance in 1989. Its four...

Hindemith composed this independent orchestral symphony in 1940, during his move into American musical life. Unlike his symphonic works derived from operas, it carries a key designation rather than a dramatic title....

This E-flat symphony by Johann Stamitz circulated in the Paris collection La Melodia Germanica. Its Op.11 designation belongs to the publisher's series rather than a consecutive opus list created by Stamitz. The...

Moeran's four-movement symphony brings together broad orchestral writing, a slow Lento, a quick Vivace and a finale that begins slowly before accelerating. He composed much of it in County Kerry and specifically...

Stravinsky assembled this wartime symphony from materials with different origins, including music connected with an unrealized film project. Piano is prominent in the outer movements, while harp has a distinctive...

Schnittke's First Symphony brings conflicting musical styles into the same large orchestral space. Quotations, popular idioms, modernist textures and theatrical actions interrupt one another across its extended...

Rubbra's First Symphony has three movements and concludes with a large Lento rather than a quick finale. The opening is marked tempestoso, while the central Perigourdine invokes a dance type and carries a playful...

Popov's First Symphony is a large three-movement orchestral work whose first performance in 1935 was followed by official suppression. Its scale and highly charged contrasts place it among the ambitious Soviet...

Corigliano wrote his First Symphony as a memorial to friends lost to AIDS. Its movements draw on memories of a pianist friend, a tarantella and a chaconne associated with his friend Giulio, before an epilogue recalls...

Penderecki's First Symphony uses four named sections, with two Dynamis sections placed between an opening and closing Arche. The score treats changes in orchestral density, register and instrumental attack as central...

Elgar's First Symphony begins with a broad motto that returns across its four movements. Much of the first movement moves away from the motto's A-flat major, creating a persistent tonal contrast. The quick second...

Schumann composed his first completed symphony during the exceptionally productive period following his marriage to Clara Wieck. Its Spring title reflects an explicitly stated seasonal association. A brass call...

Beethoven's first published symphony opens with chords that briefly point away from C major before the home key is established. Its four movements retain the outline inherited from Haydn and Mozart, but wind...

Bruckner's First Symphony exists in several authorial states, beginning with the score completed during his Linz period. It already uses the four-movement sequence that would remain central to his symphonic work....

Brahms took many years to complete his First Symphony. Its opening introduces insistent timpani beneath lines moving in opposite directions, establishing a dense and concentrated musical argument. The finale begins...

Mahler's First Symphony developed from an initially more explicitly programmatic, five-movement work into the familiar four-movement score. It draws on his own songs and places a minor-key version of a familiar round...

Prokofiev used eighteenth-century symphonic proportions as a starting point for this short four-movement work. Its compact orchestra, clear phrases and dance movement recall Haydn, while sudden harmonic turns and...

Ives wrote his First Symphony in the context of his studies with Horatio Parker at Yale. The four-movement score works within a European orchestral tradition, including a slow movement whose English-horn melody...

Rachmaninoff's First Symphony opens with a forceful motto that helps bind its four movements. Its unsuccessful 1897 premiere overshadowed the work for decades. After the composer's death, surviving orchestral parts...

Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony has six movements arranged in two large parts. The first is instrumental; the second sets the Te Deum with soloists and extensive choral forces. Its unusually large performing...

Sibelius's First Symphony begins with a solo clarinet above a quiet timpani roll, creating a distinctive introduction before the main orchestral movement. Four movements combine broad melodies with strongly profiled...

Borodin worked on his First Symphony while pursuing his scientific career and developing his craft with encouragement from Balakirev. Its four movements contrast a rhythmically active opening and light scherzo with a...

Shostakovich completed his First Symphony as a conservatory graduation work while still a teenager. Its orchestration often behaves like chamber music, passing exposed lines among solo instruments; a piano becomes...

Tchaikovsky's First Symphony bears descriptive headings for its opening two movements, linking the work with winter journeys and a misty landscape. A scherzo and a finale using a Russian folk melody complete the...

Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony places a vast opening movement beside a short, fiercely concentrated scherzo. Later movements prominently use the composer's four-note musical signature, while the third also includes a...

Mahler left his Tenth as a five-movement project in varying states of completion. The opening Adagio is far more fully worked out than most of what follows. Performances of all five movements therefore depend on...

Haydn's Military Symphony adds bass drum, cymbals and triangle to the orchestral sound familiar from his London concerts. Their conspicuous entry transforms the second movement, whose melody had an earlier life in a...

Haydn's Clock Symphony takes its nickname from the ticking accompaniment in the slow movement. That steady pattern supports a sequence of changing textures and moods, including moments when the expected regularity is...

Haydn composed the 102nd during his second London stay. A slow introduction leads into a forceful Allegro, while the Adagio gives prominent attention to the cello and delicate orchestral colours. Its premiere is...

Haydn begins his penultimate symphony with an unaccompanied timpani roll, followed by a dark introduction in the low instruments. That introductory world returns within the first movement instead of simply...

Haydn's last numbered symphony belongs to the twelve he wrote for London. A slow D-minor introduction creates a weighty opening before the main movement turns to D major. Contrasting variations, a minuet, and a...

Shostakovich's Eleventh connects four movements depicting the atmosphere and violence surrounding the events of January 1905 in St Petersburg. Revolutionary songs provide recognizable material within the orchestral...

Aho designed Luosto for an outdoor performance on the slopes of a fell in Finnish Lapland. A symphony orchestra, chamber orchestra and additional dispersed musicians surround the audience, with soprano and tenor...

Shostakovich set five poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko for bass soloist, men's chorus and orchestra. The opening poem commemorates the victims of the Babi Yar massacre and condemns antisemitism. Later movements address...

Shostakovich's Fourteenth sets eleven poems concerning death for soprano, bass, strings and percussion. The texts come from Lorca, Apollinaire, Kuchelbecker and Rilke in Russian translation. Individual songs vary in...

Shostakovich's last symphony returns to an entirely instrumental four-movement design. Recognizable quotations, including material from Rossini's William Tell overture and Wagner, appear alongside the composer's own...

Ives's Second Symphony places American songs and hymns inside a design that also recalls the European orchestral tradition. It has five movements, with slow sections framing or preparing faster ones. The music...

Honegger wrote his Second Symphony for Paul Sacher and the Basel Chamber Orchestra. Its principal forces are strings, with a trumpet that may reinforce the chorale near the end of the finale. Three movements move...

Shostakovich composed To October for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. A densely layered orchestral opening leads through contrasting episodes toward a choral conclusion. The brief work does not follow...

Borodin's Second Symphony opens with a compact, heavily accented theme that frames the first movement. Its contrasting passages favor broad melody, while the scherzo introduces a very different rhythmic energy. A...

Roussel's Second Symphony emerged after the First World War as a three-movement orchestral work. A scherzo originally considered for the symphony became the separate Pour une fete de printemps. The surviving design...

Mendelssohn described Lobgesang as a symphony-cantata, with three instrumental movements leading into a substantial sequence for solo voices and chorus. Biblical texts organize its progression toward collective...

Bruckner's Second Symphony survives in significantly different 1872 and 1877 versions. Alterations affect its proportions, orchestral details and the ordering of the inner movements. These authorial states have also...

Willan's Second Symphony belongs to the orchestral side of a career more often associated with organ and choral music. The C-minor work followed an earlier symphony in D minor and was completed in 1948. Its identity...

Mahler's Second Symphony begins with a large funeral movement and eventually answers it with voices. Dance-like recollection and a restless scherzo precede the intimate song Urlicht and the expansive choral finale....

Suk began Asrael as a memorial to his teacher and father-in-law Antonin Dvorak. The death of Suk's wife Otylka during its composition changed its emotional and structural course. Five movements form two larger parts,...

Schumann's Second opens with a brass motto that returns near the end, linking the work's outer boundaries. A rapid scherzo precedes an expansive slow movement with particularly concentrated lyrical and contrapuntal...

Brahms wrote his Second Symphony during a summer stay at Portschach in 1877. Its opening bass figure supplies material that recurs in different forms across the first movement. The four movements allow lyrical...

Beethoven's Second expands the scale and instrumental independence of the Classical symphony. Its substantial slow introduction leads to a vigorous Allegro, followed by a long Larghetto. A scherzo replaces the...

Prokofiev wrote his Second Symphony in Paris for Serge Koussevitzky. It has two movements: a densely scored, rhythmically driven opening and a longer set of variations on a melody introduced by the oboe. The...

Sibelius's Second Symphony grows from small fragments that gradually form broader statements. A restless slow movement and a rapid scherzo lead toward a finale whose opening feels prepared by much that came before....

Hanson wrote his Romantic Symphony for the Boston Symphony Orchestra's fiftieth anniversary. Its three movements share melodic material, allowing themes to return with different orchestral surroundings. Broad lyrical...

Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony builds broad melodic spans from material introduced quietly at the beginning. Four movements move through vigorous rhythmic writing, expansive lyricism, and a jubilant finale. The slow...

Elgar's Second Symphony carries a dedication to the memory of Edward VII and a quotation from Shelley at its head. Its four movements include a substantial Larghetto and a fast, rhythmically unsettled Rondo....

Stenhammar dedicated his Second Symphony to the musicians of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and conducted its premiere there in 1915. Four movements progress through an energetic opening, an Andante, a scherzo and...

Dutilleux placed a group of twelve soloists in front of a larger orchestra for Le Double. The two bodies interact across the three movements, creating changes of perspective as material passes between them. The title...

Mysterious Mountain unfolds in three movements, with a double fugue at its centre. Hovhaness balances sustained, hymn-like orchestral writing with flowing contrapuntal activity. The mountain in the title is a symbol...

Chavez built Sinfonia India around melodies associated with Huichol, Yaqui and Seri communities. The short symphony unfolds continuously, placing contrasted tempos and Indigenous melodic material within a...

Schnittke framed his Second Symphony in six sections corresponding to the Ordinary of the Mass. Voices present liturgical material while the orchestra supplies a much larger surrounding musical argument. The subtitle...

Bernstein responded to W. H. Auden's long poem by creating a symphony with a major part for solo piano. Its two broad parts contain several linked sections, including variations, a dirge and the rhythmically active...

Two English horns, rather than oboes, give this early Haydn symphony a distinctive wind sound. It opens with a slow movement in which horns and English horns exchange phrases over steady strings. Three further...

Mozart's first G-minor symphony opens with repeated syncopations and angular melodic motion. The expanded horn group adds weight to the orchestra, while contrasting sections show a growing command of longer...

Mozart's A-major symphony achieves considerable variety with a relatively small orchestra. The first movement begins quietly with a distinctive octave gesture, allowing the music to gather energy rather than announce...

Copland wrote his Third Symphony for the Boston Symphony Orchestra following a Koussevitzky Foundation commission. Its four movements culminate in a finale that incorporates Fanfare for the Common Man, first quietly...

Schnittke wrote his Third Symphony for the new Gewandhaus in Leipzig. The score engages with German musical history, using motifs derived from composers' names within a large orchestral design. Historical allusions...

Norgard's Third Symphony joins two choirs to the orchestra in a two-movement design. Its interlocking lines draw on his infinity-series technique, natural harmonics and carefully proportioned rhythms. In the later...

Roy Harris compressed the Third Symphony into one continuous movement, organized into several contrasting phases rather than separate numbered movements. Long string lines give way to increasingly active contrapuntal...

William Schuman divides his Third Symphony into two large parts, each pairing older formal types: Passacaglia and Fugue, then Chorale and Toccata. The historical names describe methods that he recasts for a modern...

Lutoslawski's Third Symphony was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. A repeated-note signal punctuates a large continuous design, moving through preparatory episodes toward a more concentrated principal...

Rachmaninoff's Third Symphony has three movements, with the central movement incorporating a scherzo inside a slower frame. A short motto returns across the work, linking passages with very different rhythmic...

Borodin left his Third Symphony unfinished at his death. The two movements normally performed were prepared and orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov from the surviving material and his knowledge of the composer's...

Mendelssohn linked the beginning of this symphony to impressions of Holyrood during his Scottish travels. He completed the work more than a decade later, shaping four movements intended to follow one another closely....

Gliere's Third Symphony turns the legend of Ilya Muromets into four large orchestral tableaux. The hero's emergence, an encounter with a formidable adversary, a princely celebration, and a final catastrophic scene...

Magnard opens his Third Symphony with widely spaced chords that return later in the work. The four movements include a scherzo titled Danses and a Pastorale introduced by the English horn. Contrapuntal writing gives...

Sibelius reduced the orchestral weight and number of movements in his Third Symphony. The opening movement is followed by a measured, dance-like slow movement; the finale begins with fragmentary scherzo material that...

Berwald completed Sinfonie Singuliere in 1845, but it did not receive its first performance until 1905. The three-movement design has an unusual centre: a scherzo is inserted inside the Adagio, after which the slow...

Prokofiev transformed material from his opera The Fiery Angel into the four movements of his Third Symphony. He redistributed themes to create an orchestral argument that can stand independently of the stage work....

Saint-Saens combines the functions of four conventional movements into two large parts. Themes return in transformed shapes, while organ and piano expand the orchestra's available colors. The organ first appears with...

Scriabin's Third Symphony unfolds as an introduction and three connected movements, commonly translated as Struggles, Pleasures and Divine Play. Its programme concerns the spirit's movement toward freedom and...

Atterberg's Third Symphony grew from musical impressions of Sweden's west coast. Its three movements bear descriptive titles commonly translated as Summer Haze, Storm and Summer Night. The outer movements give...

Bruckner dedicated his Third Symphony to Wagner, and its early version includes references to Wagner's music. Revision repeatedly changed the score's proportions, orchestration, and quoted material. The symphony's...

Mahler's Third expands the symphony into six movements with an unusually large first movement and a slow finale. Instrumental dances and nature-like calls lead to settings of Nietzsche and a Wunderhorn poem for solo...

Tyberg completed his Third Symphony before Nazi persecution ended his life. He entrusted his manuscripts to the Mihich family, whose preservation of the music eventually made modern performances possible. The Buffalo...

Bruch wrote his Third Symphony in response to a New York commission and later revised it. Its four movements continue his interest in large orchestral forms alongside the concertos for which he became better known....

The Eroica greatly expands the scale and dramatic reach of Beethoven's symphonic writing. A broad first movement is followed by a funeral march, a scherzo with prominent horns, and a variations finale drawing on a...

Schumann wrote the Rhenish soon after moving to Dusseldorf. Its five-movement layout includes an additional solemn movement before the finale, associated with impressions of Cologne Cathedral. The work combines broad...

Shostakovich's Third Symphony links a continuous orchestral sequence to a choral conclusion celebrating May Day. Changes of pace and character replace a conventional cycle of separate movements. The final vocal...

Brahms's Third Symphony begins with a compact rising figure whose notes and harmonic tensions help bind the work together. Its four movements include a restrained slow movement and a lyrical third movement in place...

Gorecki's Third Symphony sets three Polish texts associated with loss and the bond between mother and child. All three movements move slowly, using repetition and gradual growth to focus attention on the soprano's...

Nielsen's Third Symphony adds wordless soprano and baritone voices to its second movement. They become part of the orchestral sound rather than narrators of a text. The vigorous opening movement, broad slow movement,...

Panufnik composed Sinfonia Sacra for the approaching millennium of Polish statehood and Christianity. Three short Visions precede a larger Hymn, whose material grows from the medieval Polish chant Bogurodzica. Widely...

Szymanowski's Third Symphony sets poetry by Rumi in a Polish translation by Tadeusz Micinski. Tenor, chorus and a large orchestra create a continuous vocal and instrumental design rather than a conventional...

Honegger's Third Symphony uses Latin liturgical headings for three entirely instrumental movements: Dies irae, De profundis clamavi and Dona nobis pacem. Written at the end of the Second World War, it confronts...

Ives drew this compact symphony from hymn memories and music associated with his work as a church organist. Its three movements evoke a gathering, children's activities and communion at an American camp meeting. A...

Haydn wrote the Hornsignal Symphony for an orchestra with four horns, making that enlarged group immediately audible. The finale is a set of variations that features different instrumental soloists, including the...

Mozart first wrote this music for a Salzburg celebration honoring the Haffner family in 1782. He then reshaped it for a Vienna concert as a four-movement symphony, removing celebratory material and adding flute and...

Mozart wrote the Linz Symphony during an unplanned stop in that city in 1783, when a concert required a new orchestral work at short notice. It was his first symphony to open with a slow introduction. Four movements...

Mozart brought this symphony to Prague, where The Marriage of Figaro had been enthusiastically received. The work has three movements and no minuet, but its long opening introduction and intricate main movement give...

Mozart's E-flat symphony begins with a substantial slow introduction before the main movement gains momentum. Its orchestral color is distinctive because clarinets replace the oboes used in many of his symphonies....

Martinu completed his Fourth Symphony in the United States in 1945 and dedicated it to Helene and William Ziegler. Its four movements include a scherzo before the slow movement, with a broad finale completing the...

Ives's Fourth combines hymns, marches, fugue and simultaneous musical layers in four movements. Its second movement draws on Hawthorne's The Celestial Railroad, placing conflicting musical processes beside one...

Tippett compressed his Fourth Symphony into one continuous movement, using recurring sounds of breathing to frame its changing episodes. The large orchestra includes unusually substantial brass and percussion groups....

Lutoslawski wrote his last symphony for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Its two connected sections follow a plan in which an exploratory opening prepares a more continuous principal movement. A clarinet melody...

Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony reflects impressions from his travels without supplying a detailed narrative. The buoyant opening contrasts with a measured slow movement and a graceful third movement. The finale uses...

Sibelius's Fourth opens in the low register and makes the unstable tritone interval central to its musical language. Its four movements turn away from a conventional sequence of triumphal climaxes. The third movement...

Beethoven wrote the Fourth during a remarkably productive period that also produced his Violin Concerto and Fourth Piano Concerto. Count Franz von Oppersdorff commissioned the symphony. Its quiet, harmonically...

Prokofiev's Fourth Symphony grew from musical ideas related to his ballet The Prodigal Son. Koussevitzky secured premiere rights for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and conducted the original score in 1930. In 1947...

Shostakovich's Fourth was withdrawn before its planned premiere in 1936, amid the political attack on his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. The enormous three-movement score remained unheard in public until 1961. Its...

Magnard's final symphony is a four-movement work completed shortly before the First World War. A substantial opening gives way to a scherzo-like Vif and a slower movement before the finale gathers the argument. Its...

Schumann's Fourth joins its movements through recurring material and close transitions. Themes are transformed rather than left behind when a new section begins, giving the symphony a strongly cyclical shape. The...

Brahms's final symphony develops concentrated musical ideas on a large scale. Falling intervals help generate the opening movement, while the finale builds a succession of variations over a recurring harmonic and...

Glazunov dedicated his Fourth Symphony to Anton Rubinstein. It has three movements rather than the four customary in his other completed symphonies. A slow introduction presents material that continues to matter...

Bruckner's Fourth begins with a solitary horn call over quiet string tremolo. Its familiar hunting scherzo belongs to the major revision of the work rather than the original 1874 score. Bruckner repeatedly...

Vaughan Williams's Fourth begins with an abrasive clash and tightly concentrated motivic writing. Four movements culminate in an extended fugal epilogue, with material from the opening returning at the end. Its force...

Tchaikovsky's Fourth opens with a brass idea he described to Nadezhda von Meck as a representation of fate. Its recurrence interrupts the first movement and returns in the finale. Between them, an oboe-led slow...

Mahler built his Fourth Symphony around a pre-existing song that presents a child's vision of heavenly life. The soprano enters only in the finale, after three instrumental movements have prepared its musical world....

Glass based Heroes on material from the David Bowie and Brian Eno album of that name. Six movements develop selected songs into an orchestral symphony connected with a dance collaboration with Twyla Tharp. The music...

Szymanowski's Fourth places a solo piano within a three-movement symphonic design. It was dedicated to Artur Rubinstein, although the composer himself introduced it as pianist. The piano alternates between solo...

Nielsen joined the four sections of this symphony into an uninterrupted span. It was written during the First World War, but its subtitle describes the persistence of life rather than a sequence of battle scenes. Two...

Mozart's G-minor symphony belongs to the three symphonies he completed in the summer of 1788. Its opening melody begins over an already moving accompaniment rather than a grand ceremonial introduction. A later...

Mozart's last symphony combines ceremonial gestures with graceful lyricism and a finale famous for its contrapuntal craft. Small musical ideas that first seem straightforward are made to coexist in increasingly...

The opening of Haydn's Forty-third balances a gently moving violin melody against firmer orchestral responses. Muted strings colour the Adagio, while pauses and interruptions complicate the finale's apparent ease....

Haydn places the minuet second in this four-movement symphony, before the Adagio. The minuet is built as a canon, with different instrumental lines entering in imitation. The outer movements emphasize concentrated...

Haydn ends this minor-key symphony with an unexpected slow section in which players stop playing and leave until only two muted violins remain. The gesture is associated with the Esterhazy musicians' wish to return...

Haydn's Forty-eighth Symphony is especially recognizable for its high horn writing and ceremonial C-major sound. Its four movements contrast that brilliance with more restrained slow music and a lively finale. The...

Haydn's Forty-ninth begins with a full slow movement rather than a short introduction. A fast movement, minuet and quick finale follow, all maintaining close links to the home key. This older slow-fast sequence gives...

Mahler's Fifth returns to an entirely instrumental symphonic design after works that used voices. Its five movements are grouped into three larger parts, beginning with a trumpet-led funeral march and moving through...

Yoshimatsu described his Fifth Symphony as a four-act orchestral drama related to Faust. Its recurring characters and musical gestures pass through a driven opening, a scherzo with a jazz-like bass line, a lament and...

Silvestrov's Fifth Symphony unfolds as one large movement. It belongs to the period in which his music increasingly revisited the melodic language of earlier Romantic music through distant recollection and changing...

Schnittke gave this four-movement work a double title to join two orchestral traditions. Violin, oboe and harpsichord form a concertino in the opening movement, set against a large orchestra. The second movement...

Bruckner's Fifth begins with a slow introduction whose separate gestures become important to the larger structure. Its finale recalls earlier movements before developing elaborate fugal writing and a powerful...

Schubert wrote his Fifth Symphony for modest orchestral forces, omitting clarinets, trumpets and timpani. Its four movements reflect his admiration for Mozart while retaining Schubert's own melodic and harmonic...

Prokofiev returned to the symphony after a long interval with a broad four-movement score. An expansive opening is followed by a fast, sharply articulated movement, a sustained Adagio, and an energetic finale. The...

Glazunov's Fifth returns to a four-movement symphonic plan and sets its broad orchestral writing within clearly contrasted sections. A substantial opening movement is followed by scherzo, slow movement, and finale....

The opening four-note rhythm becomes a building block that connects much of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Its compact first movement contrasts with a variations movement, a scherzo, and a finale reached through an...

Vaughan Williams's Fifth uses comparatively restrained orchestral forces for a four-movement design. Some themes are connected with his long-running Pilgrim's Progress project, particularly in the central Romanza. A...

Shostakovich composed his Fifth Symphony after official criticism placed his career in danger. Its public success helped restore his standing, but the music's emotional implications remain debated. A large opening...