Robert Simpson's Symphony No. 1 was not his first attempt at symphonic composition; he discarded four earlier symphonies written in the late 1930s and 1940s.
Composition History
Robert Simpson's Symphony No. 8 was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society with funds from the Arts Council of Great Britain.
Composition History
Robert Simpson's Symphony No. 1 earned him his Doctorate at Durham University and premiered in Copenhagen with the Danish State Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Notable Performances
The first British performance of Robert Simpson's Symphony No. 1 was in 1954 under Sir Adrian Boult, to whom the work is dedicated.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Robert Simpson conceived his Symphony No. 8 by asking his friend, the late painter Anthony Dorrell, what kind of symphony he would like to hear, and then tried to fulfill his suggestions.
Compositional Technique
Robert Simpson's Symphony No. 1 has a highly original formal design: a continuous structure that corresponds to a three-part symphony by modifying the unit of time within an unchanging pulse.
Compositional Technique
Like his first string quartet, Robert Simpson's Symphony No. 1 is unified by an argument revolving around two pivotal tonalities, A and E flat, placed a tritone apart.
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