Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: What is the longest symphony?
The Symphony No. 3 by Gustav Mahler was written in 1896,[1] or possibly only completed in that year, but composed between 1893 and 1896.[2] It is his longest piece and is the longest symphony in the standard repertoire, with a typical performance lasting around 90 to 105 minutes. It was voted one of the ten greatest symphonies of all time in a survey of conductors carried out by the BBC Music Magazine.[3]
During this period, the organization's reputation for excellence was firmly established. Under his leadership, several national awards were won, including five American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) awards for adventuresome programming. In addition, the Symphony caught the attention of prominent local music critic, Martin Bernheimer, who began touting the Symphony's artistic and programming excellence. Lewis' tenure also marks the founding of the Symphony's longest-running education program, the Pasadena Youth Symphony Orchestra.
Below are the key signatures Balakirev initially envisioned for "Manfred", what he later suggested, and what Tchaikovsky eventually used in the symphony:
Like its predecessor, it is in four movements: an opening "Moderato", followed by an "Allegro", a long movement marked "Allegro pesante", with the briefer finale marked "Adagio". At around 50 minutes, it is Schnittke's third longest symphony, after the First and Second symphonies.
Symphony No. 12 in G major, K. 110/75b, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was composed in Salzburg in the summer of 1771. The symphony was apparently prepared in anticipation of Mozart's second Italian journey, which was to take place between August and December 1771. The symphony is in four movements, the opening allegro being the longest movement that Mozart had written to that date. It is the first of a group of works "painted on a larger canvas and achieving a greater individuality than his earlier exuberant pieces".
The symphony starts with a slow melody played by both oboes and clarinets and swiftly modulates to G-sharp minor. The first movement, consisting of 142 bars, is the shortest in the symphony, which is meant to be played slowly and attacca. The second movement starts with a different melody played by a bassoon and the cellos and, after reaching a climax which is followed by a transitional section, has a solo section by the timpani which are supposed to speed up timpani beats to end with a tremolo, which leads to the third movement. The second movement has 147 bars in total. Finally, the "alla breve" third movement puts an end to the symphony. This is the longest movement in the symphony, consisting of 275 bars. Pärt described this symphony on later discussions as a "joyous work" and stated that it was not "the end of my despair and search".
At about 24 minutes in length, the last movement is the longest of the four movements. Indeed, it is longer than some entire symphonies of the Classical era. Its form has been disputed by musicologists, as Nicholas Cook explains:
The work, unlike his other symphonies, is in three movements:
There is no scherzo, this being the only three-movement symphony he wrote. The "Adagio molto" is his longest symphonic slow movement, and the "Allegro vivace" is the shortest finale. A typical performance of the work has a duration of about thirty minutes.
The symphony is Shostakovich's longest, and one of the longest in the repertoire, with performances taking approximately one hour and fifteen minutes. The scale and scope of the work is consistent with Shostakovich's other symphonies as well as with those of composers considered to be his strongest influences, including Bruckner and Mahler.
The longest movement of the symphony, lasting almost fifteen minutes.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Gustav Mahler wrote long, large-scale symphonies. His Eighth Symphony, for example, was composed in 1906 and is nicknamed the "Symphony of a Thousand" because of the large number of voices required to perform the work. Additionally, his Third Symphony is one of the longest regularly performed symphonies at around 100 minutes in length for most performances. The 20th century also saw further diversification in the style and content of works that composers labeled "symphonies" (Anon. 2008). Some composers, including Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Carl Nielsen, continued to write in the traditional four-movement form, while other composers took different approaches: Jean Sibelius' "Symphony No. 7", his last, is in one movement, whereas Alan Hovhaness's Symphony No. 9, "Saint Vartan"—originally op. 80, changed to op. 180—composed in 1949–50, is in twenty-four.
At approximately 70 minutes, "A Sea Symphony" is the longest of all Vaughan Williams’ symphonies. Although it represents a departure from the traditional Germanic symphonic tradition of the time, it follows a fairly standard symphonic outline: fast introductory movement, slow movement, scherzo, and finale. The four movements are:The first movement lasts roughly twenty minutes; the inner movements approximately eleven and eight minutes, and the finale lasts roughly thirty minutes.
The first and longest movement is a slow movement in rough sonata form. As in his Fifth Symphony, Shostakovich quotes from one of his settings of Pushkin: in the first movement, from the second of his "Op. 91: Four Monologues on Verses by Pushkin for bass and piano" (1952), entitled "What is in My Name?". This theme of personal identity is picked up again in the third and fourth movements.
The Symphony No. 1 in D minor (The Gothic) by Havergal Brian is a symphony composed between 1919 and 1927. At around one and three quarter hours, it is among the longest symphonies ever composed (with Gustav Mahler's 3rd Symphony, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji's nine-hour 2nd Organ Symphony and Dimitrie Cuclin's unperformed No. 12) and, along with choral symphonies such as Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or Mahler's Eighth Symphony, it is one of a few works attempting to use the musically gigantic to address the spiritual concerns of humanity. With a key-scheme that begins in D minor and eventually closes in E major, the work is an example of progressive tonality.
The Shreveport Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is based in Shreveport, the seat of Caddo Parish and the largest city in north Louisiana. The RiverView Theater (formerly Shreveport Civic Theater) continues to be the main venue for the SSO. Founded in 1948, the symphony remains the longest continually performing professional orchestra in Louisiana.
The Battle Creek Symphony Orchestra is based at the W.K. Kellogg Auditorium in downtown Battle Creek. The symphony is conducted by Anne Harrigan. It is Michigan's longest-running symphony orchestra.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed his Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, on 10 August 1788. The longest and last symphony that he composed, it is regarded by many critics as among the greatest symphonies in classical music.
Like many of Stravinsky's other works, including "Petrushka" and "The Rite of Spring", the "Symphony of Psalms" occasionally employs the octatonic scale (which alternates whole steps and half steps), the longest stretch being eleven bars between rehearsal numbers 4 and 6 in the first movement. Stravinsky stated that the root of the entire symphony is "the sequences of two minor thirds joined by a major third... derived from the trumpet-harp motive at the beginning of the "allegro" in Psalm 150". 
With the Opus 42 symphonies, Widor shows his mastery and refinement of contrapuntal technique, while exploring to the fullest the capabilities of the Cavaillé-Coll organs for which these works were written. The Fifth Symphony has five movements, the last of which is the famous Toccata. The Sixth Symphony is also famous for its opening movement. The Seventh and Eighth Symphonies are the longest and least performed of Widor's Symphonies. The Seventh Symphony contains six movements, and the first version of the Eighth Symphony had seven. (Widor subsequently removed the Prélude for the 1901 edition.)
Myaskovsky's reaction to the events of 1917–21 inspired his Symphony No. 6 (1921–1923, rev. 1947—this is the version that is almost always played or recorded) his only choral symphony and the longest of his 27 symphonies, sets a brief poem (in Russian though the score allows Latin alternatively—see the American Symphony Orchestra page below on the origins of the poem—the soul looking at the body it has abandoned.) The finale contains quite a few quotes—the Dies Irae theme, as well as French revolutionary tunes.
The Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, was completed by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1886 at what was probably the artistic peak of his career. It is also popularly known as the "Organ Symphony", even though it is not a true symphony for organ, but simply an orchestral symphony where two sections out of four use the pipe organ. The composer inscribed it as: "Symphonie No. 3 "avec orgue"" (with organ).
The Zelman Memorial Symphony Orchestra (Zelman Symphony) is the longest-running community orchestra in Melbourne, Australia.
A Sea Symphony is a piece for orchestra and chorus by Ralph Vaughan Williams, written between 1903 and 1909. Vaughan Williams' first and longest symphony, it was first performed at the Leeds Festival in 1910, with the composer conducting. The symphony's maturity belies the composer's relative youth when it was written (he was 30 when he first began sketching it). One of the first symphonies in which a choir is used throughout the work and is an integral part of the musical texture, "A Sea Symphony" helped set the stage for a new era of symphonic and choral music in Britain during the first half of the 20th century. The work is sometimes referred to as the Symphony No. 1.
The symphony takes approximately 50 minutes to perform. This makes it the second-longest of Villa-Lobos' symphonies, after No. 10.
The symphony is his last composition preceding a nine-month stay in hospital (starting September 1970); it is also his longest symphony. There is one movement, though it divides into a number of smaller sections that follow each other with at most nominal pause but usually none. The notes to the cpo recording identify 17 such sections, partially for analysis.