1
: musical composition in a symphonic style
especially
: musical composition of complexity and seriousness of purpose regarded as appropriate to the symphony
… their suspicion of the abstract symphonic genre was deeply rooted enough to provoke calls for a new kind of proletarian symphonism based on mass song. —
Pauline Fairclough, A Soviet Credo, 2006
2
: the writing of symphonies
So Debussy and Satie began to seek a way out of the hulking fortresses of Beethovenian symphonism and Wagnerian opera.—Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise, 2007
Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Copy Citation
Share