Symphony No. 9 (Myaskovsky)

Nikolai Myaskovsky wrote his Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 28, between 1926 and 1927. It was dedicated to Nikolai Malko.

The symphony is in four movements:

Myaskovsky made the first sketches of the ninth symphony in the summer of 1926 in Tutschkowo. At this time he was not sure whether the work would become a symphony or a suite. He called it an "undefinable music-beast". Then in November Myaskovsky undertook his only journey abroad, which led him first to Warsaw to the inauguration of the Chopin monument and afterwards to Vienna. There he met the director of Universal Edition, A. I. Dsimitrowski, in order to sign a contract over the publication of his chamber music.

Myaskovsky however ran fast back to Russia, in order to worry his pupils hard and continue working over his compositions. In Moscow he prepared in the summer the sketches to the drafts of a symphony, and afterwards he dedicated himself to the conception of the tenth symphony. Only after he orchestrated the ninth symphony, were both works finished.

The relatively large-scale symphony is again in four movements, and again, as with symphonies 6 and 8, the positions of the Scherzo and the slow movement are exchanged from their usual spots. The music harmonically and melodically resembles the seventh symphony, and stands in contrast to the tenth as the seventh does the sixth. The character is predominantly dreamy and lyric, the tensions of the earlier symphonies are missing.

Myaskovsky had been occupied in this time more closely with the music of Claude Debussy, and from Sergei Prokofiev had been able from Paris to acquire some scores. In Debussy he admired the manner of representing "the lovely breathing of nature" in his music. The topic material is arranged uncomplicated and based to a large extent on folk songs or folk song-like melodies. Myaskovsky used rich polyphony, but nevertheless the music remains always transparent. Some melodies and motives are, further, heard throughout the entire piece, more so than in Myaskovsky's earlier symphonies.

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