Like Manuel de Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat, Camille Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony was born of an international collaboration. In 1871, Saint-Saëns traveled to England, where he performed for Queen Victoria and studied the Baroque composer Handel’s manuscripts in the library of Buckingham Palace. He became hugely popular over the ensuing years as a composer, conductor, and pianist, and both the universities of Cambridge and Oxford bestowed upon him honorary degrees. (After composing a coronation march for Edward VII in 1902, he was made a Commander of the Victorian Order.) In 1886, the Royal Philharmonic Society—the same organization responsible for Beethoven’s Ninth and Dvořák’s Seventh—commissioned a symphony from the French composer. The product was Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3, and the composer conducted the London premiere in 1886 and the French premiere in 1887.
One of the biggest influences on the Third Symphony was the composer and pianist Franz Liszt, who had encouraged and mentored the young Saint-Saëns. Saint-Saëns, in turn, greatly respected his friend; as he once wrote in a letter, “The world calls [Liszt] a great pianist in order to avoid acknowledging him as one of the greatest composers of our time.” Saint-Saëns composed the Third Symphony as a tribute to Liszt, intending to dedicate the work to the composer. Sadly, Liszt died ten weeks after the work’s premiere and never heard the piece his protégé had intended in homage. When the symphony was published, it bore the inscription, “À la mémoire de Franz Liszt” (To the memory of Franz Liszt).
The Third Symphony has several noteworthy features. First, Saint-Saëns uses the organ and piano, two instruments in which both he and Liszt excelled, prominently—so much that the work is often known as the “Organ” Symphony. Second, while symphonies are traditionally composed in four movements, Saint-Saëns wrote his Third Symphony in two movements. However, each is divided into two sections, maintaining the four-part structure. As Saint-Saëns explained in English (a language in which he was fluent) in the program of the English premiere.
This Symphony, divided into two parts, nevertheless includes practically the traditional four movements: the first, checked in development, serves as an introduction to the Adagio, and the scherzo is connected after the same manner with the finale. The composer has thus sought to shun in a certain measure the interminable repetitions which are more and more disappearing from instrumental music.
As was common in the works of Liszt and other 19th-century composers, Saint-Saëns based the Symphony No. 3 on a “motto” that is introduced at the beginning and subsequently transformed throughout the work, like Berlioz’s concept of the idée fixe (fixed idea) in his Symphonie fantastique). Though both movements are based on the same musical material, they differ dramatically in tone. While the first movement tends towards the “peaceful and contemplative,” as Saint-Saëns describes its expansive Adagio section, the second is energetic and majestic, with a scherzo shot through with “arpeggios and scales, swift as lightning, on the piano.” The organ is the star of the last section, magisterially commanding attention in its grand entrance with a melody made famous through its use in the 1995 movie, “Babe.” The Third Symphony ended up being Saint-Saëns’s final statement in the genre. Although he was only fifty when he composed the work, he regarded it unsurpassable. “With it I have given all I could give,” he said. “What I did I could not achieve again.”
© 2024 Jennifer More
