Whats so special about symphonies?
The ‘S’ word comes up a lot in classical music, frequently connected with rather long pieces of music. Since the symphony is one of the most important genres in classical music, we thought we’d find out a bit about what the term means, and which symphonies we should listen to. By the 17th century, musicians had developed a clear way of writing music down, and they started writing pieces for large groups of players assembled into an orchestra. Pieces where the orchestra accompanied one singer were called arias, pieces where the orchestra accompanied one or more soloists were called concertos, and anything where instruments just played together was called a sinfonia or symphony (from the Greek “sounding together”). Many baroque sinfonias were used as orchestral interludes in operas, or as overtures to set the scene at the beginning. Often these interludes were in three sections – a fast one, a slow one and another fast one. In Henry Purcell’s Opera The Fairy Queen, written in 1692, he us
