In classical music, a movement is a section of a large work, usually with a single tempo marking.

A performance of classical music with a small number of musicians, usually one player per part, and often played in a small hall or “chamber” to a smaller audience than a full orchestra would play. Traditional chamber music is classified as trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, septet and octet, and is then titled by configuration of [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Jean Sibelius premiered this one-movement work under the title “Fantasia Sinfonica.” It was only later that he decided that it was his Seventh Symphony.
Commitment Factor: About 23 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Late-late Romantic Period. Late Sibelius, really: timeless, speaking its own unique language.
What to Listen For: Note how Sibelius repeatedly employs a kind [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Realizing that this sort of modernist music had fallen into ideological disfavor, Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich withdrew his 4th Symphony before its premiere. When asked if he wanted to make any changes in it when he finally released it for performance 25 years later, he said, “Let them eat it.”
Commitment Factor: About [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Toward the end of his life, Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich revealed that the second movement of this symphony was a portrait of Joseph Stalin.
Commitment Factor: About 50 minutes.
Vital Statistics: Modern Period. A big Mahler-ian symphony in four movements.
What to Listen For: The high drama of the first movement is followed by [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: This symphony was written at the same time as the First Symphony, but Schumann revised it later so it got an updated number. No one believes these revisions were an improvement on the original.
Commitment Factor: About 30 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1841). Schumann’s most radical symphony: although in four movements, he directs [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: The title refers to the Dusseldorf, the city by the Rhine where Schumann was engaged as a conductor of the town orchestra. He was, by all accounts, a really lousy conductor, and he had eight children to support.
Commitment Factor: About 35 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1850). This is, unusually, a five-movement symphony, [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: For reasons no one particularly cares about anymore, it just so happens that Schumann’s First and Fourth Symphonies were composed in the same year. The Second and Third came later. Go figure.
Commitment Factor: About 30 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1841). This jolly, four-movement symphony, like many Romantic works, has a “program,” or [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Schubert was one of the most facile song writers who ever lived. One rainy day, when he was restless, his friends gave him a book of poetry and he sat down and wrote the music for five songs.
Commitment Factor: About forty minutes.
Vital Statistics: Early Romantic Period. (1819) A five movement quintet for [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: There is no Symphony No. 7, so if you want to buy this, go by the nickname. It’s not uncommon to see a title like: Symphony No. 7 (8), and other confusing things, depending on how “accurate” the label is trying to be.
Commitment Factor: About 23 minutes
Vital Statistics: Late Classical/Early Romantic Period [...]