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COPYRIGHT 1998 University of Nebraska Press
The phrase quoted in the title of this essay, "echt symphonisch," or genuinely symphonic, was used in 1870 by the critic Emanuel Klitzsch to describe the main theme of Max Bruch's First Symphony, op.28.(1) (We will return below to the review and the symphony itself.) Identical or similar expressions appear with striking frequency in reviews of new symphonies in the latter half of the nineteenth century in Austria and Germany. The description "echt symphonisch" may seem tautological: to call a symphony "symphonic" gives it the label of the genre to which it already belongs. In fact, such expressions are symptomatic of a nexus of issues absolutely central to music during the period in which Brahms conceived and completed his four works in the genre.
There are, of course, many studies of the major symphonic composers of the later nineteenth century, and even some of minor ones. But by focusing primarily on individual stars in the symphonic galaxy -- whether of greater or lesser magnitude -- musicologists have tended to ignore the interstellar dust: the historical, aesthetic, compositional, institutional, and sociopolitical contexts. It is something of this admittedly vast and ill-defined portion of the cosmos that I wish to sketch out in the present essay. I will discuss first the rise of the "great symphony" as an aesthetic and critical category. Then I will address more specifically historical and social aspects, including the role of professional orchestras and concert series. Next, the First Symphony of Max Bruch will be discussed as an example or locus of some issues of symphony writing in the 1860s. Finally I will consider briefly the first movement of Brahms's own First Symphony, conceived at the same time.
I
From the late eighteenth century across most of the first half of the nineteenth, the gro[Beta]e Symphonie, or great symphony, became established as the most elevated and important form of instrumental music. Already in the late eighteenth century, when the genre was relatively young, modest in dimensions, and still related to the opera overture, the symphony began to take on a hallowed and elevated position. In Sulzer's Allgemeine Theorie der schonen Kunste of 1771-74, the writer of the article "Symphonie," most likely J. A. P. Schulz, begins a long tradition of identifying the symphony as suited to "expressions of grandeur [des Gro[Beta]en], solemnity, and the sublime."(2) Writing under the sway of Beethoven a few decades later, E. T. A. Hoffmann and other early Romantic writers elaborate this image of the symphony. Hoffmann's review of Beethoven's Fifth, from 1810, in which the work is seen as occupying the realm of the "mighty" (das Ungeheuere), the "immeasurable" (das Unermessliche), and the "infinite" (das Unendliche), is the most famous example of this kind of criticism.(3)
In 1824 Friedrich Rochlitz further investigated the quality of the "great," or das Grosse, which he sought to distinguish from the sublime, or das Erhabene. His topic was not specifically the symphony, but his comments are clearly applicable to that genre:
The great (powerful, convulsive) excites the mind with all its powers in an extensive and powerful fashion -- to be precise, to wield them in a way such that we are aware of a multitude of representations that are more or less clear and amalgamated into a whole.... Music that has the great character demands the press of a multitude of melodies and harmonic turns that at first seem impossible to combine yet nevertheless come to be united in a melodic and harmonic whole.(4)
Especially characteristic of Rochlitz's description is the idea of a collective whole, of many divergent parts or elements that become combined into a cohesive entity.
In 1838, in an important and influential article on the symphony in Schilling's Encyclopadie der gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaften der Tonkunst, Gottfried Fink clearly draws on Rochlitz as well as the full range of Romantic critical prose to characterize what is now referred to specifically as the gro[Beta]e Sinfonie, or great symphony. Fink stresses that a symphony must be unified but diverse; it must create a coherent impression out of many different ideas and instruments:
Now, what is the great symphony, and how is it distinguished from any other kind of music? ... Since the great symphony, if it is to be worth its name, must represent in every respect the summit of instrumental music, then it must absolutely have as its essence, and in considerable abundance, the greatest potential for development, as does the morning dream before awakening. Thus, that which music alone has-melody; rhythm; harmony; character; the roundedness of an autonomous whole; shapes that are clear, well formed, and beautiful, even uniquely magical and stimulating; the setting into motion of these shapes -- all this must be present in the highest degree within and for the symphony, like a life force that is ever bubbling and richly vital. All these things must intertwine and grow from one another without effort, as if by chance. They must support each other mutually; they must strengthen, necessitate, and condition each other until the fruit, which must be nutritious and refreshing, is ripe. At the same time, the greatest diversity, without which the whole would be deprived of a beautiful impression, is bound together in the greatness and breadth of the entire form, with the unmistakable unity of the point of origin. The great symphony accordingly seizes the whole orchestra and all the instruments; it has their amalgamation completely within its power.(5)
Drawing on an analogy used by earlier writers that called the symphony the "opera of instruments," Fink stresses that a symphony is a public, extroverted work that must project outward to an audience. At the same time, Fink acknowledges what he called a double aspect, a Doppelansicht, to the symphony. It is at once a work of bold effects and a more finely wrought, individualized one, like a "Well-paced sentimental novel."
II
The passages from Sulzer, Hoffmann, Rochlitz, and Fink, stretching across almost seventy years and bringing us up to the childhood of Brahms, attest to the continuing importance of the symphony as a genre and as a subject of learned aesthetic discussion. What is striking, though -- and what I would like to emphasize -- is that, unlike those cases in which aesthetics are rather remote from everyday life, these strongly articulated values for the great symphony flowed directly into journalistic criticism and musical culture. The effect was paradoxically to choke off new symphonic composition because the standards had become impossibly high. By midcentury the genre of the great symphony was at once supremely prestigious and virtually moribund.
Perhaps the most prominent example of this kind of criticism is Robert Schumann's review, written in 1839 in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, of new symphonies by three younger composers, Franz Lachner, Gottfried Preyer, and Karl Gottlieb Rei[Beta]iger. Schumann, who at this point in his career had not yet cultivated the symphonic genre, with the exception of a failed early work, began by remarking how most new symphonies are bland copies of early...
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