History

The Boston Symphony Orchestra

Boston Symphony Orchestra

The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...

 commissioned the Eighth Symphony and gave its first performance on March 5, 1965, conducted by Erich Leinsdorf, to whom the score is dedicated (Archibald 1978, 267). Initially, Piston had preferred to write a flute concerto for the Boston Symphony's principal flautist, Doriot Anthony Dwyer

Doriot Anthony Dwyer

Doriot Anthony Dwyer is an American flautist. She was the first woman to be awarded principal chair for a major U.S. orchestra. She was the principal flute for the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1952 until 1990. She was second flute for the National Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles...

, but Leinsdorf preferred a symphony. The concerto was eventually composed in 1971 (Pollack 1982, 156). According to another account, however, it was Piston himself who expressed a preference for a symphony (Pollack 1982, 141).

Analysis

The work is in three movements

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

:

• Moderato mosso ( = 80)
• Lento assai
• Allegro marcato

The symphony is 20 minutes in duration (Archibald 1969, 597).

Although Piston had occasionally employed twelve-tone technique

Twelve-tone technique

Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...

 from early on, it is much more in evidence in the Eighth Symphony than ever before, and this brings with it a heightened level of impassioned, almost tragic expression. The first movement begins with a melody constructed from a twelve-tone series, C D E F A G F E D A B B, accompanied by two six-note chords consisting of the second and first hexachord

Hexachord

In music, a hexachord is a collection of six pitch classes including six-note segments of a scale or tone row. The term was adopted in the Middle Ages and adapted in the twentieth-century in Milton Babbitt's serial theory.-Middle Ages:...

s of the same row. This series lends the music a dark solemnity because of its emphasis on minor seconds and minor thirds (Archibald 1978, 267). After such a slow, prelude-like opening movement, a slow second movement is somewhat surprising. It is in variation form. The theme is announced in the bassoon followed by the flute, with subsequent variations in the strings, a moderato mosso, and three further variations (Pollack 1982, 143). The concluding Allegro marcato is in a large binary form

Binary form

Binary form is a musical form in two related sections, both of which are usually repeated. Binary is also a structure used to choreograph dance....

 with a short coda. Like most Piston finales, it is rhythmically propulsive. Inversion of melodic lines is a significant feature of this movement, which concludes with a spirited timpani solo (Archibald 1969, 597).

Reception

Reviews of the symphony's premiere were mixed, which had not been the case since the premiere of the First Symphony

Symphony No. 1 (Piston)

-History:By the time Piston finished his First Symphony he was 43 years old. It was premiered on April 8, 1938 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer ....

. Piston's biographer believes the similarity in response was due to similar weaknesses in the two symphonies, including "murky and surreal details that overwhelm the formal design" (Pollack 1982, 141).

Further reading

• Lindenfeld, Harris Nelson. 1975. "Three Symphonies of Walter Piston: An Analysis". DMA thesis, Part 2. Ithaca: Cornell University.