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Question
#20826. jay
asks:
Some big orchestra names have the word philharmonic in them, such as New York Philharmonic, while others don't, such as Atlanta Symphony orchestra. What is the difference between the two, philharmonic and symphony?
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Barrow boy
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Philharmonic means fond of music. A lot of orchestras include the word in their title just because it's become traditional for orchestras. Originally, philharmonic orchestras did set out to educate the public with good music and I am sure that any member of an orchestra still feels that this is their aim today. A symphony orchestra denotes that it is a large orchestra, because a lot of players are required to play symphonies as they were written to be played.
Apart from this there is nowadays no fundamental difference between a Philharmonic and a Symphony Orchestra. I've been to concerts involving both names and I didn't notice any difference!
Jul 21 02, 9:16 PM
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Son of The Household Cavalry
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They all pale into insignificance when you have listened to a classic played by The Portsmouth Sinfonia - The Portsmouth Sinfonia was founded by an English composer named Gavin Bryars. He started it at Portsmouth College of Art, hence its name. The philosophy of the orchestra was that anybody could join. There was no basis of skill required for joining. The only condition was that if you joined you should attend rehearsals and take it seriously. It wasn't intended as a joke - though it was sometimes extremely funny. The orchestra only played the popular classics, and it played only the most popular parts of these popular classics, the bits that everyone knows: Da-da-da dum, da-da-da dum. At its biggest it was about 78 people strong and it had a complete complement of orchestral instruments. Most people when they talk about the Sinfonia talk about it as though everybody in the orchestra was incompetent. This wasn't true, exactly. There was a range of competence, from extremely competent - they had some bona fide virtuosi in there - to completely incompetent. What was interesting about it was this mix. It wouldn't have been more interesting if it had been all incompetent or all competent. It was this particular mix so that in any piece what you heard was a number of approximations of how the piece should be played. You'd hear the melody of whatever it was, hidden somewhere among all those approximations of the melody. It was like a very blurry version, a soft-focus version, of classical music, and it produced some 'beautiful' music.
Jul 22 02, 12:23 PM
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