 After Liszt , Mahler took on the legacy of Beethoven in his early symphonies , in what Bonds terms " their striving for a utopian finale " . Towards this end Mahler used a chorus and soloists in the finale of his Second Symphony , the " Resurrection " . In his Third , he wrote a purely instrumental finale following two vocal movements , and in his Fourth a vocal finale is sung by a solo soprano . After writing his Fifth , Sixth and Seventh Symphonies as purely instrumental works , Mahler returned to the vein of " festival @-@ symphonic ceremonial " in his Eighth Symphony , which integrates text throughout the body of the work . After Mahler , the choral symphony became a more common genre , taking a number of compositional turns in the process . Some composers , such as Britten , Rachmaninoff , Shostakovich and Vaughan Williams , followed symphonic form strictly . Others , such as Havergal Brian , Alfred Schnittke and Karol Szymanowski , chose either to expand symphonic form or to use different symphonic structures altogether . 
