Unsung Monumental Symphonies

[JimL]

You know what?  All this discussion has caused me to change my opinion.  From now on, epic works are long.  Everything else is now monumental, no matter how short.

[John H White]

Jim, does that make John Cage's 4' 33'' monumental?

[JimL]

Depends on one's subjective feelings about the content.

[Mark Thomas]

It certainly is in the sense of monumental meaning "concerning a memorial to the dead".

[Josh]

"Monumental" in orchestral music always brings to me memories of climaxes that involve the building and resolution of extreme tension.  To cite a famous example of what I might consider monumental would be the finale of F.J. Haydn's Drumroll Symphony.  A less famous example would be several passages in the first movement of Ries's 5th Symphony, where the tension reaches levels that I consider almost unbearably intense (in a good way); without ever knowing how other people viewed "monumental" in music, I always thought of this as one of the most monumental movements of any symphony I'd ever heard.  Like a truly epic monument, such as viewing Mt. Everest from a distance while it's surrounded by clouds or something.  You get all the incredible sights and beauty without having to experience the temperature, rain, or wind (or lack of air, though I remember Ries's 5th Symphony did almost take my breath away the first time I heard its first movement).

[namoji]

hello all, I love this website because of something that we all have in common, and that is to rediscover forgotten music, and thereby do justice to those great masters who even today are very poorly known,
I am writing from Costa Rica in the appearance of a monumental symphony, well it's hard to define, it could be monumental for its duration, its structure, its lyricism, or his orguestacion, I have always regarded the symphony as large korsakov 2 , As the No.8 of Glazunov.
disculopen my bad English, I hope to improve it later.

[chill319]

Enjoying everyone's thoughts. Here are a few more, unpolished to be sure.

Instrumental art music frequently echoes instrumental social music, either by virtue of its division of the pulse or its grouping of the pulse. I think for me 'monumental' has metrical and rhythmic biases. Few instrumental openings are more monumental than that of Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra. Yet when I was getting to know that work years ago, the musical discourse seemed utterly deflated by its Viennese waltz finale, as though the dark night of the soul could be "cured" by a chocolate bar. I wonder if anyone else has had a similar early reaction?

I'm not saying that a waltz, jig, or even boogie would automatically be out of place in monumental music. But something square or martial certainly has a better chance of convincing my imagination that larger than life feelings are to be summoned.  As in the opening of Brahms's PC 1. Am I confusing heroic with monumental? Would Siegfried *be* Siegfried without its monumental length? Perhaps there's a certain overlap.

To me, much of Henry Moore's work is monumental -- not too simple, not too complex.  So I wonder if textural complexity in music fights against the impression of monumentality. There may be a kind of direct diction that I associate with 'monumental'. To take two impressive early 20th-century works that both explore disjunction and unrest and are not too long, I would say that Sibelius's Voces intimae quartet, with its many unison passages and interrupted patterns, approaches monumental diction more surely than does Schoenberg's intricately "patternless" Erwartung.

Satie's short "Vexations" with its 840 repetitions may in complete performance require a monumental effort. Yet I think most would agree that the musical result is, quite likely intentionally, anything but monumental. And this is precisely because it is purely iterative and mechanical. From this I gather that, for me at least, monumental somehow involves not merely a large scale but higher levels of integration between different scales of perception, expression, and so on. In order to make audible the different patterns on different time scales that are being integrated, one tends to use a larger canvas, as it were. In contrast, Erwartung is full of subtle pattern relationships that flash by at a speed that almost defies direct perception -- at least without sufficient preparation and study.

[Hofrat]

A monumental work makes me want to jump up and join the orchestra or the chous.  Two works in which I must be restrained are by Beethoven:

9th symphony (that huge tutti with the chorus singing "vor Gott!").
Fidelio (the prison chorus "O Freiheit!").

Who is not moved by these monuments?!

[FBerwald]

How about the Symphony no. 1 in F major by Stenhammar. I heard an absolutely stunning version by Neeme Jarvi!!!

[chill319]

If the version you heard is the same one I have, it's a live performance (the first modern one, I think) and you can hear the audience roar at the end. I always roar with it. I love the way the Scandinavians responded to Bruckner.

[ahinton]

Sorabji Organ Symphony No.2.

Premier this year in Glasgow and Amsterdam (which i am going to attend).

Could be momumental, but a shortish 6.5 hours.

See you there (if you mean Glasgow - sadly, I can't get to the Amsterdam performance) - but bear in mind that the estimated duration is now first movement 1 hour 5 minutes, last movement 2 hours 55 minutes and middle movement 4 hours 10 minutes...

Monumental or what?...

Best,

Alistair

[wunderkind]

Monumental or what?...

Arggghhh - perhaps just long?   

[Amphissa]

 
Oh hell .... first there was monumental, then there was epic, now there is epic monumental. Next it will be gigantinormepic humongomonumental.

[Alan Howe]

Er, quite.

Let's just stick to 'big' or 'long'.

[FBerwald]

Monumental .. Hmmmmmmmmmm......
Beethoven Symphony No.5
Mahler Symphony No. 5
Shostakovich Symphony No. 5
Glazunov Symphony No. 5
Raff Symphony No. 5.........
................etc
Any other Monumental No. 5's???