Songfacts®:

• In this song, The Supremes are so smitten that every time the guy comes around, it's like he has his own sweet theme music. Lamont Dozier, who wrote and produced the song with his partners Eddie and Brian Holland, told the story in a Songfacts interview: "I used to go to the movies and I would see that the main stars had their own theme songs. When they appeared on the screen, you would hear this melody behind them - they had their own little melody each time they appeared in the movie. So the lyrics, 'Whenever you are near, I hear a symphony,' it was about this guy. Whenever he came around, in her mind she got this feeling and she heard this melody. He brought out the music in her."
• This was written by the songwriting team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, who wrote five consecutive #1 hits for The Supremes, starting with "Where Did Our Love Go." Their next single was "Nothing But Heartaches," which brought the streak to an end when it peaked at #11, but they went right back to the top with the next one, "I Hear A Symphony."
  
  Most of these chart-toppers had an element of heartbreak in the lyric, but "Back in My Arms Again (their fifth #1) and "I Hear A Symphony" are about the happiness and ecstasy of pure true love.
• You won't hear a full symphony orchestra in this song, but there is a prominent string section, arranged by Paul Riser, that implies it. Otherwise, the instrumentation is more typical, with a saxophone section and piano (played by Funk Brother Earl Van Dyke). The song evokes classical music in its structure though, building throughout to a kind of crescendo.
• Brian Holland, who wrote the song with his brother Eddie and their songwriting partner Lamont Dozier, had an affair with Diana Ross in the early '60s. It was a very emotional time for him, and a lot of those feelings came out in this song. In the book The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success and Betrayal, he revealed that the song never got to him until the '80s, when he was driving one day and the song came on the radio. "I hadn't had any emotional reaction to it before that. It took 25 years for it to sink in how good that song is," he said. "Things were happening in our lives by then, Eddie's and mine, that began to creep into the songs. Those songs were supposed to be about simple things. And at the beginning, they were. It was 'baby this, baby that.' But when I hear something like 'Symphony,' man, there ain't nothing simple about it."
• Lamont Dozier had a crush on a girl named Bernadette, who he cites as inspiration for this song. She also inspired the Four Tops' "Bernadette."
  
  "It was a feeling I had as a kid," he recalled to The Guardian. "Whenever she was around, I felt uplifted."
• "A Lover's Concerto" by the girl group The Toys was in influence on this track. The song adapted the Bach composition "Minuet In G," incorporating classical music into a pop song. The Toys were unknown and the song was released on a small label called DynaVoice, so it took a while to climb the charts. The Motown machine moved quickly; "A Lover's Concerto" spent three weeks at #2 starting on October 30, 1965, held off by "Get Off of My Cloud" by The Rolling Stones. "I Hear A Symphony" knocked The Stones out of the top spot on November 20 and remained at #1 for two weeks.