Symphony No. 1 "The Gothic" (Brian)
The Symphony No. 1 in D minor (also known as The Gothic) by Havergal Brian was composed between 1919 and 1927, and partly owes its notoriety to being perhaps the largest symphony ever composed (described thus by the Guinness Book of Records, though Sorabji's unperformed No. 2 and Dimitrie Cuclin's unperformed No. 12 are claimed as longer). Along with choral symphonies such as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or Mahler's 8th Symphony, it is one of a few works attempting to use the musically gigantic to address the spiritual concerns of humanity. With an elaborate key-scheme which begins in D minor and works round eventually to a close in E major, the work is a notable example of progressive tonality.
Read more about Symphony No. 1 "The Gothic" (Brian): Structure, Composition, Instrumentation, The Music, Performances and Reception
Famous quotes containing the words symphony and/or gothic:
“The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man—that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense—has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The gothic is singular in this; one seems easily at home in the renaissance; one is not too strange in the Byzantine; as for the Roman, it is ourselves; and we could walk blindfolded through every chink and cranny of the Greek mind; all these styles seem modern when we come close to them; but the gothic gets away.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)