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The original was posted on /r/classicalmusic by /u/fugue-for-thought on 2023-10-03 18:58:00.

The favorites post made by u/24dinitrophenylhyd 12-ish hours ago reminded me of a very arbitrary but interesting ‘best’ list I saw many years ago. I don’t believe it was on Reddit (I think it was on a classical music forum/message board), but if it was, it was many years ago.

So here’s the rule: Nine symphonies, nine composers. Feel free to tack on a tenth or a ‘best’ symphony without a number. So, who has the ‘best’ symphony #…

Here’s ONE version of my list, along with some alternatives. This could obviously be swapped around many ways (and now after making one draft, I’ve frustrated myself that I can’t put Mahler, Beethoven, Shostakovich, and Brahms in multiple (same) slots):

  1. Brahms (full stop, although Mahler, and Shostakovich maybe)
  2. Mahler (he could be so many of these, but this was the first Mahler symphony I fell for)
  3. Robert Simpson (I just have to give the ninth to Beethoven but otherwise he’d come here, alternatively Mahler )
  4. Bruckner (alternatively Brahms, Shostakovich, or less so Tchaikovsky)
  5. Shostakovich (alternatively like everyone: Beethoven, Bruckner, Prokofiev, Sibelius, Mahler)
  6. Myaskovsky (although Mahler really is the right answer here)
  7. Sibelius (alternatively Bruckner, Pettersson, Shostakovich)
  8. Schubert (alternatively Bruckner, Mahler. Picking Schubert’s unfinished here feels a little unfair to the likes of these massive completed symphonies, but… they’re spoken for)
  9. Beethoven (alternatively Mahler, Bruckner, Schubert, and honestly more distantly trailing than most people’s lists, Dvorak.)

Unnumbered: Symphonie Fantastique, no question.

Obviously this sort of leaves out the later, great works of Mozart and Haydn.

And again, it’s completely arbitrary and just silly but also fun. I hope.

What’s your list?