ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1, the author discuses the meaning and significance of the symphony as a genre. Therefore, the discussion contains the nature and the status of the genre since its origins up to the early twentieth century, as well as the terms and ideas permeating the symphony and symphonic thinking in the twentieth century: with indicating the principles which remained most influential for twentieth-century composers and their recreations of the genre. The last section brings to the fore the term of symphonism, as crucial for understanding both the status of symphonic music at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, as well as the idea of symphonic thinking. The various types of symphonism are discussed here, following the ideas defined by Assafiev, Ivashkin and Hepokosky, among others. The terminology used and explained in Chapter 1 is crucial for understanding the later part of the book, as it is being used and referred broadly in the following chapters.
