It is not easy to review a publication whose title promises an exciting exploration into a fascinating repertory in need of reappraisal, only to have this anticipation suspended within a couple of pages. The book's title outwardly alludes to Hector Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette, a work the composer explicitly called symphonie dramatique. Laudon takes this as a point of departure to explore diverse compositions written between 1839 and 1851 – programme symphonies, symphony-cantatas, symphonic odes, etc. – ‘hybrid types’, as he calls them, that ‘combine purely musical elements with subject matter that is extra-musical’ (p. vii). Immediately one is faced with issues of nomenclature and generic identity: What is a dramatic symphony? What makes a symphony dramatic – as opposed to what? What types of extra-musical associations are implied? Is this a new genre category? Laudon dutifully calls the opening chapter ‘A Matter of Terminology’ and one assumes that all these questions will be addressed. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Laudon sensibly surveys eighteenth-century philosophical discussions of aesthetics that posit distinctions between pure, characteristic and dramatic music (p. 14). Any such classification system would merit an extensive and systematic exploration that should leave no stone unturned, if one were to formulate an accurate taxonomy of sorts. Laudon does not problematize the use of the term ‘dramatic’ at all; rather, he takes it at face value and even proceeds to equate dramatic music with programme music. This latter concept poses one of many problems in relation to the repertory the author chooses to include, which ranges from purely instrumental symphonies to symphonic works with choruses. Although ultimately he admits that he wants to eschew creating categories and ‘inflexible systems’ (p. 16), this is exactly the concern at the heart of the opening chapter.

From this point on, Laudon divides the rest of book into seven chapters that explore distinct concert seasons that span the period from 1839 through 1851. It is an attractive idea, and it allows him to create a chronicle of performances. The premiere of Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette in 1839 determines the emergence of the ‘dramatic symphony’ in the concert season 1839–40 (Chapter Two). That the work is a hybrid between a symphony and an oratorio is not only revealed in its structure and content (three of the seven movements call for solo voices and chorus), but also implied in Berlioz's own words in the Preface: ‘There will doubtless be no mistake about the genre of this work’, Berlioz wrote about this innovative symphony, a contemplation on Shakespeare's play. Berlioz's ‘Avant-Propos de l'auteur’ should have provided the perfect launching point for an exploration into the composer's aspirational generic label, but is curiously omitted.Footnote ¹ Even the division of the symphony into four ‘parts’ (p. 20) alludes to early misinterpretations of the work as a four-movement symphony.Footnote ²

The author organizes the diverse compositions discussed in Chapters Two and Three by chronology – they premiered or were performed during the 1839–40 season. Other than Roméo et Juliette, the list includes works that have a legitimate place in this repertory of dramatic compositions, chief among them Felix Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 2, Lobgesang (1840). Written as a celebratory piece for the 400th anniversary of the invention of printing, the work is a Symphonie-Kantate (in Mendelssohn's description) on words of the Bible, and thus it comes closest to the Berlioz model. Other works discussed as examples of ‘[h]ybrid combinations of oratorio, operatic, and symphonic styles’ (p. 44) include Schubert's ‘Great’ C major Symphony, Jan Bedřich Kittl's Jagd-Symphonie, two of Henri Reber's symphonies and Louis Spohr's Fourth Symphony, Die Weihe der Töne. I think we would all agree that oratorio elements do not even enter into Schubert's Symphony; Kittl's Jagd-Symphonie is in the tradition of eighteenth-century characteristic music appropriating the familiar music topos of the hunt; Reber is aptly described by Frédéric Robert as a ‘belated classicist’Footnote ³ and his symphonies follow in the classical tradition; and Spohr's Die Weihe der Töne is a programmatic symphony (on a poem by his friend Carl Pfeiffer), squarely in the tradition of the Symphonie fantastique. Nevertheless, the musical evidence provided is highly unsatisfying.

Chapter Four comprises seasons 1841–43, and again assembles discrete compositions that seem to be forced to fit into a mould: Schumann's symphonic music, Niels Gade's First Symphony and even Schumann's oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri. If the latter work ‘is not symphonic’, Laudon concedes, it nevertheless merits inclusion because it ‘calls for a large orchestra, is long enough to require an entire concert of its own, and its basic musical themes recur’ throughout the movements (p. 63). The most peculiar part of the chapter, however, entails a discussion of works whose scores have been lost – by Bohemian-born Robert Nicolas-Charles Bochsa and Émile Douay's Création. It seems unconventional, at best, that further arguments are made based on compositions whose notoriety (if any) exists only through their critical reception history.

Chapter Five recounts Berlioz's 1843 German tour and Laudon provides a wealth of references to contemporary reviews culled from the German press. This is a useful collection of sources if one wishes to follow up on this literature. Chapter Six explores a number of diverse dramatic compositions that received performances during the 1844–46 seasons. The goal seems to be the proclamation at the end of the chapter that, ‘As the year changed from 1845 to 1846, the bastions of the noble German symphony, the spiritual world of absolute music, the products of the tone poet, appeared about to give way before the steady pressure of French dramatic symphonies’ (p. 98). Among the latter, Laudon considers extensively Félicien David's ode-symphonie Le désert (1844), a work that both in name and style conforms to the generic principles of dramatic symphony set forth in the book. If nothing else, the work's subject matter and generic novelty satisfied the audience's predilection for the exotic, and thus accounts for its phenomenal popularity at the time.Footnote ⁴

Keeping with the chronological scheme, Chapter Seven considers the years after Le désert (seasons 1845–47), and Chapter Eight surveys the seasons 1847–51 – the ‘apogee’ of the dramatic symphony, as Laudon aptly titles it. Both chapters recount an assortment of concerts, writings and premieres, all of which bring the book to what seems to be less of a culmination and more of an open-ended cliffhanger. What happens to the dramatic symphony after 1851?

The book constitutes an admirable piece of scholarship by a veteran scholar who, in his nineties, is resolved to heighten our understanding of a body of work ready to be reevaluated. Probably the principal question that needs to be answered is whether the repertory Laudon is proposing constitutes a new generic category. The author sensibly asserts in the book's Preface that this is not ‘a study of a single fixed genre’ (p. vii), and proceeds to cite the unavoidable pitfalls that Carl Dahlhaus cautions about in his own investigation into the theory of musical genres. I believe, however, that new approaches to genre studies research (ones that investigate genres as infraction and also negotiations between the composer, performer, and audience) might prove valuable for future endeavours in this topic.Footnote ⁵

In sum, a more systematic approach and the inclusion of recent scholarship might have given this study the authoritative power that it currently seems to evade. The volume could also have benefited from careful editing – errant footnotes (pp. 29–30), misspellings (on p. 123, fn. 21, Berlioz's Damnation is turned into Tentation) and incorrect dates (the discussion of Berlioz's Roméo begins with a wrong year on p. 3) are unjustifiable for any academic publication. Laudon's book, however, constitutes a laudable undertaking and his readings of the repertory offer appealing insights; one only hopes that other scholars will come along to build on his work.