Why do symphonies have numbers

Symphony, sonata, piano quintet, concerto — these are all composition types. Classical music composers wrote works in many of these forms and often the same composer wrote multiple pieces in the same type.

Even using the composer name often does not narrow down which piece you are referring to. He wrote 9 of them! This could be something as simple as Symphony No. The problem with referring to a piece by the generic name, even along with the composer, is that, again, that may not enough to identify the exact work. While Symphony No. Non-generic names, or classical music nicknames and sub-titles, are often more well-known than generic names.

They can even be so famous that the composer name is not necessary to clarify which piece you are referring to. Who gave classical music works their non-generic names? Lists of concertos and sonatas are available at imslp. When the music is for more than one instrument, there are two common ways to name the piece. One is by naming the instruments individually, for example:. Terms for tempo are also standard. Just like the common forms, if listeners know what Adagio or Allegro mean, than they know what to expect.

The most common examples of these are the most common tempo markings. For example:. So far we discussed naming a piece by picking some aspect of the music itself. These titles are associated mostly with Classical music. The other main way of naming a musical composition involves something or someone outside of it.

Often these are sources of inspiration such as poems and stories , intended to evoke a mood, imitating nature, honouring a person or a place, and less commonly, remembering a particular year. Instrumental music tends to be the most difficult to name. Such pieces are often named with a suggestive phrase. Here are some great examples:. A character piece is a short piece of music intended to evoke some particular mood and typically written for solo piano. These kinds of pieces were very popular and important in the Romantic era.

Obviously nature is a common source of inspiration for composers and pieces titled accordingly are in the thousands. Anything in the natural world goes: a time of day, animals, the seasons, landscapes, the sea, the wind and so on and on. Another common source of inspiration for composers are other art forms such as painting as well as stories, myths and poems. The names of these compositions are often the same name as the story or poem they depict. This was invented in the romantic era as a large-scale, one movement work for orchestra and intended to depict stories.

So his symphonies are all under Hob1 and so on. Luckily this is an exception! Simple numbers that help us place the music in the lives of the people who wrote it, and so make sense of it. Beethoven only wrote one Ninth Symphony, Sibelius used descriptive titles like "Finlandia. In this question and answer series, Russell Torrance gives his take on your burning questions about classical music. Throughout history, great music has inspired great art. Here are three composers who become the subjects of art themselves.

What is an opus number? Fri 21 Jun Audio Player failed to load. Play Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Image: You've probably seen the humble opus number on sheet music and programs, but what actually are they?