understood in his day. With him the restless tendency resulted in a new
form intended to displace the symphony: the symphonic poem, in a single,
varied movement, and always on a definite poetic subject. Here was at
once a relief and a recess from the classic rigor. Away with sonata form
and all the odious code of rules! In the story of the title will lie all
the outline of the music.

Yet in this rebellious age--and here is the significance of the
form--the symphony did not languish, but blossomed to new and varied
flower. Liszt turned back to the symphony from his new-fangled device
for his two greatest works. It has, indeed, been charged that the
symphony was accepted by the Romantic masters in the spirit of a
challenge. Mendelssohn and even Schumann are not entirely free from such
a suspicion. Nevertheless it remains true that all of them confided to
the symphony their fairest inspiration. About the middle of the century,
at the high point of anti-classical revolt, a wonderful group of
symphonies, by Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Liszt, were presented
to the world. With the younger Brahms on a returning wave of
neo-classicism the form became again distinctively a personal choice.
Finally, in the spontaneous utterance of a national spirit on broad
lines, as in the later Russian and Finnish examples, with the various
phases of surging resolution, of lyric contemplation and of rollicking
humor, the symphony has its best sanction in modern times.

To return to the historical view, the course of the symphony during the
century cannot be adequately scanned without a glance at the music-drama
of Richard Wagner. Until the middle of the century, symphony and opera
had moved entirely in separate channels. At most the overture was
affected, in temper and detail, by the career of the nobler form.