But the symphony must in the natural course have suffered from the very fulness of its own triumph.  We know the Romantic reaction of Schumann, uttered in smaller cyclic forms; in Berlioz is almost a complete abandonment of pure music, devoid of special description.  Liszt was one of the mighty figures of the century, with all the external qualities of a master-genius, shaking the stage of Europe with the weight of his personality, and, besides, endowed with a creative power that was not understood in his day.  With him the restless tendency resulted in a new form intended to displace the symphony:  the symphonic poem, in a single, varied movement, and always on a definite poetic subject.  Here was at once a relief and a recess from the classic rigor.  Away with sonata form and all the odious code of rules!  In the story of the title will lie all the outline of the music.

Yet in this rebellious age—­and here is the significance of the form—­the symphony did not languish, but blossomed to new and varied flower.  Liszt turned back to the symphony from his new-fangled device for his two greatest works.  It has, indeed, been charged that the symphony was accepted by the Romantic masters in the spirit of a challenge.  Mendelssohn and even Schumann are not entirely free from such a suspicion.  Nevertheless it remains true that all of them confided to the symphony their fairest inspiration.  About the middle of the century, at the high point of anti-classical revolt, a wonderful group of symphonies, by Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Liszt, were presented to the world.  With the younger Brahms on a returning wave of neo-classicism the form became again distinctively a personal choice.  Finally, in the spontaneous utterance of a national spirit on broad lines, as in the later Russian and Finnish examples, with the various phases of surging resolution, of lyric contemplation and of rollicking humor, the symphony has its best sanction in modern times.

To return to the historical view, the course of the symphony during the century cannot be adequately scanned without a glance at the music-drama of Richard Wagner.  Until the middle of the century, symphony and opera had moved entirely in separate channels.  At most the overture was affected, in temper and detail, by the career of the nobler form.

The restless iconoclasm of a Liszt was now united, in a close personal and poetic league, with the new ideas of Wagner’s later drama.  Both men adopted the symbolic motif as their main melodic means; with both mere iteration took the place of development; a brilliant and lurid color-scheme (of orchestration) served to hide the weakness of intrinsic content; a vehement and hysteric manner cast into temporary shade the classic mood of tranquil depth in which alone man’s greatest thought is born.