Symphony is an extended orchestral composition, typically in four movements, that became the central monumental form of western music.
The symphony took shape in the mid-18th century from the Italian opera overture and the orchestral suite. Joseph Haydn, often called the 'Father of the Symphony', composed 104 of them and standardised the four-movement design: a fast first movement (often in sonata form), a slow second, a minuet or scherzo, and a fast finale. Mozart wrote 41, Beethoven nine — and Beethoven's Ninth (1824), with its choral finale setting Schiller's 'Ode to Joy', changed forever what a symphony could be. Brahms, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, and Mahler extended the form into hour-long emotional landscapes. In the 20th century, Sibelius compressed it, Shostakovich made it political, and Pärt stripped it bare. The symphony has been the pre-eminent measuring-stick of Western composers for two and a half centuries: the form on which they staked their reputations.