Emilie Mayer – Symphony No. 7

Mayer’s Symphony No. 7 is frequently cited as her greatest work. It opens with a stormy Allegro agitato in compound meter. Unsurprisingly, this movement is in sonata form, but this particular sonata form is more like a sonata in watercolor: all the section edges are blurred, and the development section modulates through fairly distant keys before returning to the home key of F minor. The second movement is reminiscent of a lyrical Brahms movement, but Mayer retains her own voice. The third movement, nominally a scherzo, isn’t truly a scherzo. Rather, it’s a dance movement that takes the storm motif of the first movement and reimagines it and mixes it with placid, pastoral passages. The final movement is a rondo with an incredibly modern-sounding harmonic language, ending where the piece began in F minor instead of giving in to the “darkness to light” theme so common in symphonies of the day thanks to the influence of Beethoven.