Rock Around the Croc: How to Listen to a Symphony

The title is wrong, of course. There’s no one right way to listen to a symphony. More importantly, the symphonies change so much over the decades and centuries that it’s hard to even think about a “symphony” as just one thing. It’s like saying “here’s how to listen to rock n’ roll,” and ignoring the fact that Elvis Pressley and KISS both play rock n’ roll. With that in mind, I picked the earliest guy, the “father of the symphony,” Josef Haydn, as the focus for today’s post. The easiest way to understand what’s going on is to recognize that Haydn took pre-existing, Baroque-era forms, combined them into this new form called the symphony, that form was refined throughout the Classical era by composer such as Mozart and Beethoven, and then Beethoven so thoroughly transformed the symphony that he effectively ended the Classical era and ushered in the Romantic. So I start with Haydn, recognizing that he established the pattern that later composers would fiddle with and make their own.

Symphony No. 6 in D major, nicknamed “Le Matin,” was written in 1761, the first after he joined the Esterhazy court in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The symphony is in four movements. Although I spent the past few weeks describing the four forms used in composing symphonies (theme and variations, minuet and trio, rondo and sonata), you see different designations in a symphonic program, primarily titles that describe the tempos. So with Haydn’s No. 6, the movements are described as:

1. Adagio-Allegro (0:00)
2. Adagio-Andante-Adagio (6:06)
3. Minuet and Trio (12:58)
4. Finale: Allegro (17:06)

Adagio means slow, allegro means a brisk, lively tempo, and andante means moderately slow. So before you listen to a single note, you should have a guide that tells you how the flow of energy will move through the piece.

The best way to understand anything is to break it down into its component pieces. If you really want to get a feel for something like a symphony, you need to listen carefully to each of the four movements, recognizing that each movement can be further broken down. Even though the whole symphony is only twenty-two minutes, that is still far too much information to hold in your brain without considering the component parts.

Notice how the first movement starts so quiet and simple. The first theme is a barely-whispered handful of notes in the strings that builds in volume and orchestration until it rests at 0:45. Every commentary I’ve read says this is where the symphony gets its nickname, “the morning,” as it suggests the rising of the sun, even if the rest of the piece makes no further attempt at symbolic meaning. This is the “adagio” part of the movement, and all the rest of it will be the allegro. You will definitely notice the difference.

At 0:46 we’re into the sonata proper, as the flute introduces the principal theme – a chirpy little melody that will get fuller as more instruments start to double it or echo it. This process continues until the 1:39 mark, at which point we decide that if it was worth listening to once, it’s worth listening to again, so we repeat the process from the introduction of the theme (but not the introductory material). That carries us through to the 4:06 mark by the end of the repeat. Next up is a development section that further explores the theme and features several of the instruments playing brief solos on that theme, until we recapitulate and conclude the movement at 5:40.

The more I listen to that movement, the more things I hear in there that I like. As I said before, Haydn was brand new to his job at the Esterhazy court, so he wanted to make a good impression on the boss. But he also wanted to make nice with the musicians on staff, so he wrote the piece in order to spread around the good bits. So there’s this little five note trill that first shows up at 1:23 that jumps from one instrument to another, like chirping birds copying each other on different branches of the same tree. I also love the lower-voiced instruments that play a steady eighth note rhythm. It’s easy to ignore those voices until you listen and realize how much variety there is to them, how they propel the action forward but then getting more complicated in their own right.

Movement II is designated as adagio-andante-adagio, so we can expect a piece in three sections that move slowly, pick up in the middle, and return to slow. In this case, the two adagio sections are pretty short bookends (the first adagio runs 6:06 to 7:25), and the real meat of the piece is the andante that begins at 7:25. The andante consists almost entirely of traded solos, between the violin and the tutti [i.e. the rest of the orchestra], or between the violin and the cello. These solos are like conversations between the different voices, sometimes copying each other and sometimes contrasting, but always speaking the same language of the movement as a whole. The movement ends with a return to the adagio, starting at 11:49, and winding up at 12:41. In the course of that last minute, the orchestra only plays nine measures of music, which tells you something about just how slow and delicate this conclusion is. I especially love that in this final section, all three violin voices play nothing faster than a half note, and all of the musical motion is in the lower voices. Beautiful.

The third movement is a minuet and trio, which you may remember evolved from a Baroque-era dance (the minuet) that added a middle section in order to prolong the piece and introduce a new theme. The overall structure is Minuet (A-A’-B-B’), Trio (C-C’-D-D’), Minuet (A-B). These can be broken down even further. In the trio, strikingly enough, we start with dueling solos between the bass and the bassoon (C and C’). The D sections have long pieces of bassoon solo until they end with a reprise of the bass solos. All this before returning to the minuet for one last go. The whole movement is barely four minutes.

The final movement starts at 17:06, and is designated as allegro, so it will be as fast of a tempo as we’ve heard in the symphony. It is also much louder than the last two movements, because we are back up to the full orchestra, and we’re in for a wild ride. Listen as the solo material passes from the flute to the violin to the bass and back again. The connective tissue between these solos includes these wonderful passages of ascending lines that jump from higher to lower-register instruments. The piece ends with one final flute solo, and then the full orchestra for an eight bar conclusion.

That is, I think, more than I’ve ever written on one piece of music in this series. The point here is not to talk about a form in general, but to tie together much of what I’ve discussed in the past in one big bow, and to try to show how it all falls into place in a symphony. If you know how to listen for the structures (which, by the way, is much much easier if you can read music and you follow along in the score while you listen), you get a sense of why the composer is doing what he’s doing, and that’s when the little details can start to pop out at you. I have always loved listening to the really smart people break down what’s happening in music, but there’s no one who does that for every piece I want to understand, so it falls on me to learn how to do it on my own. That means work, and the more work I put into the music, the greater the reward I pull out of it. It also means devoting a lot of time to what you’re doing, because the more you practice something, the better you get at it, and appreciating music takes practice.

I want to end with two things. The first is my modern tie-in that I like to do. Here’s Symphony of Destruction, by Megadeth:

The second thing is an invitation. Pick a piece of music – it doesn’t have to be Classical, it can be anything, just make sure it’s something you like. Find a quiet place with a comfortable chair and access to good speakers. Make sure you have some free time. Turn on your piece of music and just listen to it. I think most of what people listen to is background noise – while we’re running, or driving, or doing chores. We turn it on and immediately tune it out of our conscious minds. Don’t do that. Listen to your music intentionally, listen to the different layers involved. Try to hear the details that the musician put in there to make the piece extraordinary. Think about where the music goes, and where it takes you. Then, please tell me in the comments which song you picked and tell me what you love about it.

Have a truly blessed day and be kind to someone who needs it.

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