It is a shame that Korngold is thought of mainly as a film composer (having written the musical score for, among other films, several Errol Flynn swashbucklers and Bette Davis dramas), for he composed plenty of “serious” classical compositions as well, most significantly his sole symphony (composed in 1952). It is a mighty creation, its ominous opening grabbing the listener’s attention immediately. Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Symphony in F sharp major, op. The compositions on this list come from this period.ġ0. Beethoven helped birth the Romantic period, and the era saw its final great exponents in Sergei Rachmaninoff and Gustav Mahler. Symphonic works began to aim at expressing the deepest emotions during the so-called Romantic period, which developed in the early 1800s and ended in the mid-twentieth century. These great composers therefore do not appear on this list, despite their seemingly inexhaustible ability to generate wonderful melodies. Haydn may never have aimed to create works with this end in mind, and for Mozart it was within the dramatic structure of opera that he would attempt such feats. Their symphonies and orchestral works, however, were generally intended to entertain, to dazzle and not to plumb the depths of the soul. Joseph Haydn and Mozart were the greatest, earliest exponents of symphonic form. In addition to melody, of course, great and beautiful symphonies must display a mastery of structure and orchestration, a command of tone color and harmony, and an expertise in developing musical ideas. The great villains here at those three stooges of atonality, those emperors without clothes of the Second Viennese School: Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. Melody largely went out of fashion as the twentieth century wore on, as lesser composers incapable of writing a decent tune tried to turn the concept of beauty on its head by creating new standards for composition and by mocking the masters of melody as vulgar populists. Though melody is only one component of musical composition, it is the bone on which a piece is built, “the essence of music,” as Wolfgang Mozart put it. Only pieces that have great melodies can do this. In picking my top ten, I evaluated pieces largely on their mysterious ability to touch the deepest part of the soul. All this, I suppose, is an attempt to inoculate myself against the harshest of criticism, which I will undoubtedly receive, for the attempt below to rank the ten most beautiful symphonies ever composed. Any list that seeks to rank the most beautiful works of any kind is thus going to be subjected to fierce debate. Though beauty is an absolute reality, we human beings see through a glass darkly, and the space between objective beauty and our own personal taste can be fuzzy. Here are the ten most beautiful symphonies ever composed. In addition to melody, great and beautiful classical symphonies must display a mastery of structure and orchestration, a command of tone color and harmony, and an expertise in developing musical ideas.
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