Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. The word referred to a...
Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. The word referred to a variety of different concepts before ultimately settling on its current meaning designating a musical form. In late Greek and medieval theory, the word was used for consonance, as opposed to ???????? , which was the word for "dissonance". In the Middle Ages and later, the Latin form symphonia was used to describe various instruments, especially those capable of producing more than one sound simultaneously.Isidore of Seville was the first to use the word symphonia as the name of a two-headed drum, and from c.?1155 to 1377 the French form symphonie was the name of the organistrum or hurdy-gurdy. In German, Symphonie was a generic term for spinets and virginals from the late 16th century to the 18th century. In the sense of "sounding together," the word begins to appear in the titles of some works by 16th- and 17th-century composers including Giovanni Gabrieli's Sacrae symphoniae, and Symphoniae sacrae, liber secundus, published in 1597 and 1615, respectively; Adriano Banchieri's Eclesiastiche sinfonie, dette canzoni in aria francese, per sonare, et cantare, Op. 16, published in 1607; Lodovico Grossi da Viadana's Sinfonie musicali, Op. 18, published in 1610; and Heinrich Schütz's Symphoniae sacrae, Op. 6, and Symphoniarum sacrarum secunda pars, Op. 10, published in 1629 and 1647, respectively. Except for Viadana's collection, which contained purely instrumental and secular music, these were all collections of sacred vocal works, some with instrumental accompaniment. In the 17th century, for most of the Baroque era, the terms symphony and sinfonia were used for a range of different compositions, including instrumental pieces used in operas, sonatas and concertos—usually part of a larger work. The terms "overture", "symphony" and "sinfonia" were widely regarded as interchangeable for much of the 18th century. In the 17th century, pieces scored for large instrumental ensemble did not precisely designate which instruments were to play which parts, as is the practice from the 19th century to the current period. To give one example, whereas the bassline in a 19th-century work is scored for cellos, double basses and other specific instruments, in a 17th-century work, a basso continuo part for a sinfonia would not specify which instruments would play the part. However, if a bigger budget was available for a performance and a larger sound was required, a basso continuo group might include multiple chord-playing instruments and a range of bass instruments, including cello, double bass, bass viol or even a serpent, an early bass wind instrument. LaRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson write in the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians that "the symphony was cultivated with extraordinary intensity" in the 18th century. Since the normal size of the orchestra at the time was quite small, many of these courtly establishments were capable of performing symphonies. The young Joseph Haydn, taking up his first job as a music director in 1757 for the Morzin family, found that when the Morzin household was in Vienna, his own orchestra was only part of a lively and competitive musical scene, with multiple aristocrats sponsoring concerts with their own ensembles. LaRue, Bonds, Walsh, and Wilson's article traces the gradual expansion of the symphonic orchestra through the 18th century.