What symphony can you not live without?

[Christo]

Singular? I only know about one: Franz Berwald 3, the Sinfonie singuliere. My own once-and-for-all choice would be Ralph Vaughan Williams' `War Requiem', A Pastoral Symphony

[semloh]

Before this thread becomes an opportunity for further list-making, may I gently nudge forum members back towards the whole point of it - i.e. what symphony (SINGULAR ) can you not live without? Thanks!

Even though your phrase "not live without" is not meant to be taken literally, I think you're asking the impossible, Alan, at least for me.  It's like asking which member of my family would I save from death if I could only save one.... my mind just goes into a spin and I want to name them all!   

[eschiss1]

Too bad one can't re-consider the question as one of Pratchett's characters did (when asked what he would take out of a burning building) in the novel Maskerade...

[Alan Howe]

The point of the thread is to surely to invite people to make a choice and give a reason. Much more interesting than mere lists.

[Ser Amantio di Nicolao]

Sung?  Mahler's 2nd, easy.  If heaven don't sound like that I don't want in.    (More detailed answer?  It does things to me that no other music can.)

Semi-sung?* The Vaughan Williams 8th - that battery of gamelan in the last movement never fails to send me.  And the entire work as a whole is a masterpiece of convention defied, to me.

Unsung? The Lilburn 1st - I'll never forget the feeling I had on first listening to it. 

*As an American, I get to claim Vaughan Williams as "unsung", I think - the continued neglect of all but a handful of his pieces by large American orchestras in my experience is absolutely inexcusable.  In all my years of concert-going I've heard exactly ONE of the symphonies live.  (The 6th, with Slatkin and the NSO some years back - it was paired with the Brahms Second Piano Concerto and something of William Schuman's.)

[Dundonnell]

Although in general I prefer Bruckner's grand, imposing monumentality to Mahler there is no doubt in my mind that Mahler's 2nd and, in particular, the last two movements do represent music at its most transcendently beautiful

I cannot listen to the last movement without being profoundly moved. The last six minutes or so are among, if not at the very pinnacle of, my favourite passages in all music. Those fantastic key changes at "I shall live..." and again through the last three minutes never fail to have me come out in goose-bumps

I feel precisely the same sort of ecstatic emotion as Lenny Bernstein does here-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rECVyN5D60I&feature=share

[Mark Thomas]

I couldn't have put what I feel about the close of Mahler's 2nd any better than Dundonnell has in his second paragraph. For all that I love so many unsungs and have flown the flag of Raff for forty years, if I could have only one piece of music to last me for the rest of my life it would be the finale of the Resurrection Symphony. I've heard it in concert five or six times and have cried at every one.

[Ser Amantio di Nicolao]

I couldn't have put what I feel about the close of Mahler's 2nd any better than Dundonnell has in his second paragraph. For all that I love so many unsungs and have flown the flag of Raff for forty years, if I could have only one piece of music to last me for the rest of my life it would be the finale of the Resurrection Symphony. I've heard it in concert five or six times and have cried at every one.

I've only heard it live once, but I have several recordings.  It's my go-to 9/11 piece...something about the words of the final movement, too.

I can trace the point at which I break down even farther than that - it's the chord under the final iteration of the word "Herz".  Something about that...it feels to me as if everything for which he has been striving over the past hour is finally bursting forth and breaking free, when the bottom drops out of the chord and out from under the chorus.  It feels, for lack of a better term, as if the entire orchestra is hyperextended, and that it's finally touching what it's been seeking for so long.  And after that, everyone is loosed from the mooring and continues onward and upward until the end.

To me, three composers have captured Heaven as it ought to be: Mahler, Vaughan Williams, and Boito.  With all due respect to the others, only Mahler's is really universal to me; Vaughan Williams' is peculiarly English and Boito's is full-throated Italian.  But not worth any the less for it, naturally. 

[Dundonnell]

Yes

Your middle paragraph sums it up very neatly ".....everything for which he has been striving over the past hour is finally bursting forth and breaking free...."

The greatest pieces of music, at least in my opinion,  have a sense of direction and purpose. One is taken on a journey. That may be a journey of the intellect, of the mind, or it can be an emotional/spiritual journey. In the Mahler I have no doubt that it is the latter and that the closing pages are a spiritual release which is truly cathartic in the very fullest meaning of that word

[jerfilm]

i'm so glad to learn that I'm not the only one who is brought to tears by the Mahler 2nd finale.  His 8th at the very end where the organ comes charging in also does that to me...... And even though i'm not he least bit Catholic, the closing pages of DREAM OF GERONTIUS grabs me even more than the Mahler.

Jerry

[semloh]

....Mahler's 2nd
....I feel precisely the same sort of ecstatic emotion as Lenny Bernstein does here-

Yes, indeed, Colin!

Bernstein is still my preferred conductor of Mahler - despite Solti, Haitink, Tennstedt, Morris, etc (all of which I have, and many more besides  )

As to a particular passage that moves me more than any other, it's in the 1st Symphony ... and I know that even seasoned musicians struggle to hold themselves in check during performances, at precisely the same point. Off hand I can't specify the precise point in the score - but I will do so later, just to see if others share that 'moment'!

[Jimfin]

And even though i'm not he least bit Catholic, the closing pages of DREAM OF GERONTIUS grabs me even more than the Mahler.

Jerry

I quite agree. I remember J.L. Pearson saying his aim in church architecture was 'to bring the people to their knees', and I think this is what 'Gerontius' does to people. The ending must be one of the most satisfying I know.

[Ilja]

Sung: Schubert 9, because it's perfect.
Unsung: Schmidt 2. A piece that moves me so much it scares me.

[ajones]

I am definitely choosing Beethoven's symphony 9! i have bee a fan of his work and i do hope that i will get to play it on my own someday to, i have been so inspired by his music since i am a budding musician as well. i do like playing the piano and i have been learning to be good at it since i was a little kid although i don't think i am still that good at it, i am hoping to master his symphonies and get to play this one favorite of mine.

[shamokin88]

These have been interesting reads for me. Although I accept at face value those who offer a dozen or more in the "only" category, those who have gotten their response down to a single symphony suggest an implicit story - if untold - in their choices. Some of the untold stories leave me baffled. Bizet? Berwald?

For me I would have to choose Rachmaninov 3, in Ormandy's mono Columbia incarnation.

By 1955 - I was fourteen - I had come to know Brahms 2 and 4, the Schubert "Unfinished," Dvorak 9 - numbered 5 in those days, the Franck and Tchaikovsky 6.

One golden October day I bought myself a copy having just heard in a generic "music appreciation" class the same recording. I wanted my own, to hear it again. A thanks to long-gone Curtis York for playing it that afternoon.

It was unlike anything else I had experienced. It was if anything was possible, as if there were no limits to the expressive possibilities of sound, the opening of some sort of spiritual doorway, through which I passed in those days. A year later I was in pursuit of Scriabin, Mahler, Nielsen and Hanson, for example. And five-some decades later, here I am: Boleslaw Woytowicz and Oboukhov..

But the Rachmaninov has remained. The bare, tightly held - within a minor third! opening has latent within it all that of those days, and all that of the many days since, almost a wise, subtle, comforting friend.

As I said, with a story; and there you have mine - as well as I can put what is not told in words in words.

Best to all.