History

Piston composed his Fourth Symphony on commission from the University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

 to mark the centennary of the university's foundation in the following year. The symphony was first performed by the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra

Minnesota Orchestra

The Minnesota Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.Emil Oberhoffer founded the orchestra as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1903, and it gave its first performance on November 5 of that year. In 1968 the orchestra changed to its name to the Minnesota Orchestra...

 under Antal Doráti

Antal Doráti

Antal Doráti, KBE was a Hungarian-born conductor and composer who became a naturalized American citizen in 1947.-Biography:...

 on the 30th of March, 1951.

Instrumentation

• Piccolo
  Piccolo
  The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
  
  
• 2 flute
  Flute
  The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
  
  s
• 2 oboe
  Oboe
  The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
  
  s
• English horn
• 2 clarinet
  Clarinet
  The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
  
  s in B-flat
• Bass clarinet
  Bass clarinet
  The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...
  
  

• 4 horns
  Horn (instrument)
  The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....
  
   in F
• 3 trumpet
  Trumpet
  The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
  
  s in C
• 3 trombone
  Trombone
  The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
  
  s
• Tuba
  Tuba
  The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...
  
  

• Timpani
  Timpani
  Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...
  
  
• Triangle
  Triangle (instrument)
  The triangle is an idiophone type of musical instrument in the percussion family. It is a bar of metal, usually steel but sometimes other metals like beryllium copper, bent into a triangle shape. The instrument is usually held by a loop of some form of thread or wire at the top curve...
  
  
• Wood block
  Wood block
  A woodblock is essentially a small piece of slit drum made from a single piece of wood and used as a percussion instrument. It is struck with a stick, making a characteristically percussive sound....
  
  
• Snare drum
  Snare drum
  The snare drum or side drum is a melodic percussion instrument with strands of snares made of curled metal wire, metal cable, plastic cable, or gut cords stretched across the drumhead, typically the bottom. Pipe and tabor and some military snare drums often have a second set of snares on the bottom...
  
  
• Cymbals
• Bass drum
  Bass drum
  Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...
  
  

• 2 harp
  Harp
  The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
  
  s

• Strings

Analysis

This work, like the earlier Third

Symphony No. 3 (Piston)

The Symphony No. 3 by Walter Piston was composed in 1946–47.-History:The Koussevitzky Music Foundation commissioned the Third Symphony and Piston began work on it in 1946 , completing the score at Woodstock, Vermont, in the summer of 1947...

 and later Sixth

Symphony No. 6 (Piston)

-History:Piston composed the symphony to mark the 75th Anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He dedicated the score to the memory of Serge Koussevitzky and his wife Natalie. The symphony was first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Charles Munch, on November 25,...

 Symphonies, is in four 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...

:

• Piacevole (half note=84)
• Ballando (quarter note=132)
• Contemplativo (eighth note=92)
• Energico (dotted quarter note=120)

A typical performance will last around 25 minutes.

The first movement begins with a flowing, two-octave melody in the violins, countered by a chromatic theme in the clarinet. The second movement is a "dancing" movement in rondo form, featuring irregular meters (3/4, 7/8, 5/8, 2/4, etc.), alternating with a 6/8 waltz and a vigorous theme "reminiscent of country fiddling". The Contemplativo grows from an almost completely atonal

Atonality

Atonality in its broadest sense describes music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality in this sense usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale...

 opening theme into an explosive climax. The finale is in sonata form

Sonata form

Sonata form is a large-scale musical structure used widely since the middle of the 18th century . While it is typically used in the first movement of multi-movement pieces, it is sometimes used in subsequent movements as well—particularly the final movement...

, with the first theme strongly rhythmic, and the second (in the oboe) more cantabile. The development section is short, and leads through a return of the second theme in the violins to an exuberant ending built on the first theme.

Further reading

• Austin, William. 1955. "Piston's Fourth Symphony: An Analysis". Music Review 16:120–37.
• Ferguson, Donald Nivison. 1954. "Piston". In his Masterworks of the Orchestral Repertoire: A Guide for Listeners, 418–21. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.