Symphony No. 2 by Hans Werner Henze was composed in 1949 and premiered on 1 December that year in Stuttgart by the South German Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hans Müller-Kray. The symphony is dedicated to the conductor

Hermann Scherchen Hermann Scherchen (21 June 1891 – 12 June 1966) was a German conductor. Life Scherchen was born in Berlin. Originally a violist, he played among the violas of the Bluthner Orchestra of Berlin while still in his teens. He conducted in Riga ...

Background

Henze began contemplating a new symphony early in 1949 and wrote to

Wolfgang Steinecke Wolfgang Steinecke (22 April 1910 – 23 December 1961) was a German musicologist, music critic, and cultural politician. In Darmstadt, he revived cultural life after World War II, especially by initiating the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, which ...

, organiser of the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, hoping for a performance at the course that year. Henze missed the deadline but a commission from South German Radio allowed him to continue and complete work on the symphony, which he did between May and August.Thomas Schulz (2014), liner notes for Wergo recording

Structure and style

For a New Year's Day 1961 performance, drastic cuts were made to the first and second movements. Henze later claimed that he "never undertook changes" to the symphony, but they persisted into the published score. The final movement is in four sections: 1) slow and melodic, mainly for strings, 2) a march-like ostinato for the

winds Wind is the natural movement of air or other gases relative to a planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hou ...

, 3) a second ostinato based on the

B-A-C-H motif In music, the BACH motif is the motif (music), motif, a succession of note (music), notes important or characteristic to a musical composition, piece, ''B flat, A, C, B natural''. In German musical nomenclature, in which the note ''B ...

and 4) a final ''allegro'' which quotes Bach's

cantata A cantata (; ; literally "sung", past participle feminine singular of the Italian verb ''cantare'', "to sing") is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir. The meaning of ...

Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern "" (; How lovely shines the morning star) is a Lutheran hymn by Philipp Nicolai written in 1597 and first published in 1599. It inspired musical settings through centuries, notably Bach's chorale cantata , but also vocal and instrumental works by ...

''. It concludes in a

coda Coda or CODA may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * Movie coda, a post-credits scene * ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television *''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...

featuring a slowing of the tempo and finally four fortissimo chords made up of all 12 pitches of the

chromatic Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are most often used to characterize scales, and are also applied to musical instruments, intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. They are very often used as a pair, ...

scale Scale or scales may refer to: Mathematics * Scale (descriptive set theory), an object defined on a set of points * Scale (ratio), the ratio of a linear dimension of a model to the corresponding dimension of the original * Scale factor, a number ...

. Henze himself said that the symphony is "music for a winter's day, utterly grey and gloomy".

References

{{Authority control 1949 compositions 2