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symphony

Extended musical composition

Entitytype of musical work/composition musical form music genreQ9734

Also known as symphonies

Instance of: type of musical work/composition
, musical form
, music genre
Subclass of: composed musical work
Founded: 16th century

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in ancient Greece, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work typically consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often three or four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts.

Overview

All data

59 statements · 20% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Different from: Q20978328
concordance
sinfonia concertante
symphonic poem
Has list: list of symphonies by number
Influenced by: sinfonia

On other databases

46 identifiers linking symphony across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

20%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 7, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). symphony (Q9734). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/symphony-Q9734