# William Schuman's Puzzling Seventh Symphony

The Music Division of the Library of Congress and the American Musicological Society, in joint partnership, presented another in a series of lectures highlighting musicological research conducted in the division's collections. Steven Swayne of Dartmouth College discussed William Schuman's Seventh Symphony. Commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the fall of 1954, the symphony premiered in the fall of 1960, nearly five years after the 75th anniversary of the BSO. Schuman's correspondence unexpectedly reveals that much of the Seventh Symphony was written not for Boston, but for the Philadelphia Orchestra. Only when the Philadelphia commission collapsed did Schuman repurpose the already-composed music for Boston. Still more intriguing is the presence of a 12-tone row as the opening subject of the first movement. While others have noted the presence of 12-tone harmonies in Schuman's music, to Swayne's knowledge no one has ever remarked on this unusual appearance of a 12-tone melody. The manuscript of the Seventh Symphony in the Koussevitzky Collection of the Library of Congress solves the puzzle about the Philadelphia-Boston connection.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2010
- By: Library Of Congress
- Genres: Music
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021688420/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2021688420?play=1)