General Features
Like an oratorio or an opera, a choral symphony is a musical work for orchestra, choir and (often) solo voices, although a few have been written for unaccompanied voices. Berlioz, who in 1858 first coined the term when describing his work Roméo et Juliette, explained the distinctive relationship he envisaged between voice and orchestra:
Even though voices are often used, it is neither a concert opera nor a cantata, but a choral symphony. If there is singing, almost from the beginning, it is to prepare the listener's mind for the dramatic scenes whose feelings and passions are to be expressed by the orchestra. It is also to introduce the choral masses gradually into the musical development, when their too sudden appearance would have damaged the compositions's unity....
Unlike oratorios or operas, which are generally structured dramaturgically into arias, recitatives and choruses, a choral symphony is structured like a symphony, in movements. It may employ the traditional four-movement scheme of a fast opening movement, slow movement, scherzo and finale, or as with many instrumental symphonies, it may use a different structure of movements. The written text in a choral symphony shares equal standing with the music, as in an oratorio, and the chorus and soloists share equality with the instruments. Over time the use of text allowed the choral symphony to evolve from an instrumental symphony with a choral finale, as in the Beethoven's Ninth, to a composition that can use voices and instruments throughout the entire composition, as in Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms or Mahler's Eighth Symphony.
Sometimes the text can give a basic outline that correlates to the four-movement scheme of a symphony. For instance, the four-part structure of Edgar Allan Poe's The Bells, a progression from youth to marriage, maturity, and death, naturally suggested the four movements of a symphony to Sergei Rachmaninoff, which he followed in his choral symphony of the same name. The text can encourage a composer to expand a choral symphony past the normal bounds of the symphonic genre, as with Berlioz for his Roméo et Juliette, yet stay within the basic structural or aesthetic intent of symphonic form. It can also influence the musical content in parts where there is no singing, as in Roméo et Juliette. There, Berlioz allows the orchestra to express the majority of the drama in instrumental music and saves words for expository and narrative sections of the work.
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