Composers who wrote just one symphony

[eschiss1]

Rott had a mostly complete symphony for strings, so yeah.

[Alan Howe]

As it happens I've just been listening to the Grimm and Dietrich symphonies. Both contain some fine music and seem to look forward to Brahms. The Dietrich though is let down by a rather weak finale but he was by no means the only composer to grapple with the "finale problem".

Yes, that's a fair assessment. Both are clear examples, though, of symphonies that deserve to be included in concert programmes. They also prove beyond doubt that there's rather more to the 'Dahlhaus Gap' than that particular musicologist thought existed. We ought to be grateful that we can at last hear them for ourselves and make up our own minds...

[Ilja]

Now that we're on the subject of individual symphonies, I have been listening of late to three Flemish symphonies that were composed in around 1900 more despite than thanks to the influence of Peter Benoit, who maintained that Flemish music ought to be 1) vocal and 2) written in Dutch. Because of Benoit's influence (he was the director of the Antwerp conservatory) all three composers never continued after that one symphony. They are:

• Lodewijk Mortelmans' Homerische Symfonie (Homerian Symphony) of 1898. A clear mix of Beethovenian and Wagnerian influences, conceived on an ambitious scale, both in scoring and length, and quite satisfying even if the "finale problem" crops up up here as well.
• Adolphe Biarent's Symphony in D minor (1908), influenced rather by Franck (a theme of whose symphony is briefly quoted), Gounod, and to a lesser degree, Wagner. Quite compact at just under 30 minutes, and with a lightness of touch that offers an interesting contrast to Mortelmans' more monumental approach. A short but beautiful adagio, and a solid conclusion for a change.
• August de Boeck's Symphony in G major of 1896 falls between the two above in terms of scale, and in my view the strongest work of the three. Again, Franck is a notable influence, but there are others. Some passages sound positively Rimsky-Korsakovian (e.g., the end of the first movement and the andante). The movements all have their individual character but work together very well, and the playful finale offers a fitting end to the work, with good tension throughout. A very, very good piece.

Here we have three composers demonstrating great skill in creating orchestral works in their early years, and then only finding a a career in vocal music and largely abandoning orchestral composition. This seems to happen quite often - compare it to the career of people such as Ruperto Chapí and Conrado del Campo in Spain.

[FBerwald]

I always thought Flor Alpaerts' charming Pallieter was a Symphony, but it turns out, it's a Symphonic poem; yet his work list mentions a Lentesymfonie.

[Ilja]

There is a definite avoidance of "symphony status" in Belgium around this time - an interesting phenomenon in itself. I  was told Pallieter started out as a symphony based on Felix Timmermans' novel. Something similar goes for Paul Gilson's La Mer, which remains a crypto-symphony even in its eventual form.

Significantly, the next Belgian and particularly Flemish generation of composers started churning out symphonies by the handful. Think of Arthur Meulemans' fifteen, and six each for Jef van Hoof and Joseph Ryelandt.

Edit: Ryelandt was born in 1870, so really the same generation as De Boeck et al., but being an independently wealthy nobleman he could afford to make his own decisions.

[Rainolf]

The Austrian Franz Xaver Müller (1870-1948) falls into this category. He was a priest, organist in St. Florian and later Kapellmeister of the cathedral of Linz. In his youth he had regular meetings with Anton Bruckner, but did not study formally with him. Bruckner, to whose memory he dedicated an organ piece, was nevertheless the greatest influence on Müller's composing style. Müller wrote mostly church music: an oratorio on the life of St. Augustine, masses, motets. His most ambitous instrumental piece is his Symphony in D major from 1910, which, according to contemporary reviews, is 1 hour and 7 minutes long, and shows that its composer was a devoted Brucknerian.