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The original was posted on /r/classicalmusic by /u/fugue-for-thought on 2023-10-03 18:58:00.
The favorites post made by u/24dinitrophenylhyd 12-ish hours ago reminded me of a very arbitrary but interesting ‘best’ list I saw many years ago. I don’t believe it was on Reddit (I think it was on a classical music forum/message board), but if it was, it was many years ago.
So here’s the rule: Nine symphonies, nine composers. Feel free to tack on a tenth or a ‘best’ symphony without a number. So, who has the ‘best’ symphony #…
Here’s ONE version of my list, along with some alternatives. This could obviously be swapped around many ways (and now after making one draft, I’ve frustrated myself that I can’t put Mahler, Beethoven, Shostakovich, and Brahms in multiple (same) slots):
- Brahms (full stop, although Mahler, and Shostakovich maybe)
- Mahler (he could be so many of these, but this was the first Mahler symphony I fell for)
- Robert Simpson (I just have to give the ninth to Beethoven but otherwise he’d come here, alternatively Mahler )
- Bruckner (alternatively Brahms, Shostakovich, or less so Tchaikovsky)
- Shostakovich (alternatively like everyone: Beethoven, Bruckner, Prokofiev, Sibelius, Mahler)
- Myaskovsky (although Mahler really is the right answer here)
- Sibelius (alternatively Bruckner, Pettersson, Shostakovich)
- Schubert (alternatively Bruckner, Mahler. Picking Schubert’s unfinished here feels a little unfair to the likes of these massive completed symphonies, but… they’re spoken for)
- Beethoven (alternatively Mahler, Bruckner, Schubert, and honestly more distantly trailing than most people’s lists, Dvorak.)
Unnumbered: Symphonie Fantastique, no question.
Obviously this sort of leaves out the later, great works of Mozart and Haydn.
And again, it’s completely arbitrary and just silly but also fun. I hope.
What’s your list?