Title: Symphony No. 3 in C minor, “Organ Symphony,” Op. 78
Duration: Approximately 36 minutes
Composer: Camille Saint-Saëns (Born in Paris in 1835; died in Algiers, Algeria in 1921)
Work composed: 1886
World premiere: Saint-Saëns conducted the premiere on May 19,1886 at St James’s Hall in London. Later that year, after the death of his friend Franz Liszt, Saint-Saëns’s dedicated the Symphony to his memory.
Instrumentation: 3 flutes (including piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, piano (for two and four hands), organ, strings
Symphony No. 3 in C minor, “Organ Symphony,” Op. 78
Part One:
1. Adagio – Allegro moderato
2. Poco adagio
Part Two:
3. Allegro moderato – Presto
4. Maestoso – Allegro
French composer, organ and piano virtuoso, Camille Saint-Saëns, had by 1886 reached world renown and in that year, the Royal Philharmonic Society of London (the same Society that had commissioned Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in 1824) commissioned Saint-Saëns for a new work. Realizing that France was lagging behind the rest of Europe in the Western Symphonic tradition, Saint-Saëns had been trying to reestablish the “French Symphony” as a vital art form. He had already written four symphonies to date, but nonetheless decided that his new work for the Philharmonic Society would also be a symphony. Though it was, in fact, his fifth in the genre, it was the third of them to be published, hence its title as Symphony No. 3. To Saint-Saëns, much was riding on the reception of this Symphony, so he “pulled out all the stops.” The success and brilliance of the work led to a wave of interest among his compatriots – within a decade, five superlative symphonies were written by French composers (by Franck, Chausson, Lalo, and others), but the Organ Symphony’s appeal reached the entire world.
In creating his Third, Saint-Saëns used several innovative ideas. One was to incorporate a particularly Romantic-era compositional technique called “cyclical form,” a method earlier perfected by Franz Liszt (and to whom Saint-Saëns would dedicate his Symphony). This technique introduces one, or more, relatively short motives, and continually transforms them throughout the work, bringing them through a kind of transformative journey. Indeed, a short four-note motive is heard in the Symphony’s slow, and dramatically quiet, introduction – a motive that will figure prominently and continually throughout the work in many varied ways. When the tempo soon speeds up, Allegro moderato (moderately fast), Saint-Saëns presents a second motive that will also cycle through dozens of variations in the music to come. Here, it’s first heard played by the upper violins as a series of doubled, oscillating and rapid-fire pitches, its character “restless” as Saint-Saëns called it, and agitated. This restless motive will also pervade much of the Symphony in many different variations. This first movement overall is sweeping, with waves of nervous energy welling up and subsiding, now exciting, now mysterious, always moving inexorably forward until the last few bars. Just at the end, everything suddenly quits, and the little four-note motive from the introductory bars, plucked in the string basses, ebbs quietly away.
Another innovative idea that Saint-Saëns used in this Symphony was structuring it into two large Parts, each Part containing two movements without pauses separating them – instead of the typical four discreet movements. Thus, the second movement of Part I, Poco adagio (rather slow and stately), follows the first movement with barely a breath in between. The Adagio begins in a hush, but even more unique here is that Saint-Saëns, one of the world’s greatest organists, unveils a very unexpected surprise. That hush of sound comes from the soft and pillowy registers of the organ. Treated simply as another of the orchestral instruments, the organ here provides a luxurious harmonic bed of sonic color, over which this movement will sing. And the movement is indeed one of Saint-Saëns’s most lovely creations. The violins enter right away with a melody crafted directly out of the four-note motive, but here, there is no mystery, just lyrical beauty. This new melody drifts softly about, like a floating feather. It’s then caught by the clarinet as the next song maker. A middle section arrives that imbues the restless motivic rhythms from the first movement back into the strings, but here it’s as though they’re rustling leaves in the wind. Mystery returns as well, with dissonant chords and slowly plucked strings trading moments with the organ. This builds back into the return of this Adagio’s beautiful melody, and the movement ends as softly as it began, leaving only the organ to fade into the twilight.
A rather long moment of silence allows for the heavenly Adagio to evaporate, and to set the stage for Part II. This third movement, Allegro moderato, is a Scherzo – a devilishly paced, triplet-based movement in the usual symphonic structure. The strings take the first movement’s restless motive and make it even more agitated here, punctuated by solo rumbles in the timpani. The driving, breakneck rhythms are shared by strings and winds, and tumble wildly forward into a contrasting section Presto (very fast). Again, Saint-Saëns, also one of the finest piano virtuosos of his day, now adds the surprise of piano to this section. Virtuosic runs up the piano’s keyboard glitter like festival sparklers, while very staccato (short, clipped) triplets patter away in the winds. The two sections repeat, but as the Presto returns the second time, a brooding bass line emerges in the trombone and tuba, almost like a liturgical plainchant, which is a very elongated version of the first movement’s restless motive. This bass line then grows into a glowing brass chorale. Finally, the restiveness and chatter of the winds increasingly calms and quiets down until the final movement breaks forth without any pause.
A massive and grand major-key chord from the organ begins the finale movement, as Saint-Saëns described it, proclaiming “the defeat of the restless, diabolical element” [the restless motive] and breaking into “the blue of a clear sky.” This sunburst moment from the organ is, of course, how this work earned its nickname as the “Organ Symphony.” After a few bars of basking in this majestic sunrise, the previous movement’s brass chorale returns, now in the strings, accompanied by the addition of piano. Now scored for two players (one keyboard played by four hands), the piano part flutters wildly about the keyboard, adding a kind of astronomical twinkle. With all manner of cyclical manipulation of the original four-note and restless motives abounding throughout the movement, before long all instruments combine to then catapult the Symphony to its exhilarating closing bars – with organ blasting, brass heralding, and timpani pounding. Saint-Saëns has created one of not only France’s, but all of Western music’s, most gloriously jubilant symphonic endings.
As Saint-Saëns himself summed up his achievement in this Symphony:
“With it I have given all I could give. What I did I could not achieve again.”