The work is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and the usual strings.

Both Bernard Shore[4] and Donald Tovey[5] wrote analyses of the symphony and preferred the earlier orchestration while noting the improved integration of the revision, suggesting that the revised structure could profitably be paired with the original scoring as far as possible.

Schumann's deficiencies as a conductor led to him doubling entries between parts, so that the score became "playable but opaque".

[6] Schumann may also have borrowed a melody that appears in the first and fourth movements from the continuous string accompaniment for "Siehe!

wir preisen selig" ("Happy and blest are they"), the final chorus in scene one of Felix Mendelssohn's oratorio "St. Paul," a work which Schumann praised in a letter dated March 2, 1839.