Symphony No. 3 (Saint-Saëns)
The Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, was completed by Camille Saint-Saëns in 1886 at the peak of his artistic career.[1] It is popularly known as the Organ Symphony, since, unusually for a late-Romantic symphony, two of the four sections use the pipe organ. The composer inscribed it as: Symphonie No. 3 "avec orgue" (with organ).
Symphony No. 3
1886
To the memory of Franz Liszt
2 (4)
19 May 1886
St James's Hall, London
Philharmonic Society Orchestra
The symphony was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society (then called simply the Philharmonic Society) in England, and the first performance was given in London on 19 May 1886, at St James's Hall, conducted by the composer. After the death of his friend and mentor Franz Liszt on 31 July 1886, Saint-Saëns dedicated the work to Liszt's memory.
The composer seemed to know it would be his last attempt at the symphonic form, and he wrote the work almost as a type of "history" of his own career: virtuoso piano passages, brilliant orchestral writing characteristic of the Romantic period, and the sound of the organ suitable for a cathedral or large concert halls (which were typically equipped with the instrument).[2] Saint-Saëns noted: "I gave everything to it I was able to give. What I have here accomplished, I will never achieve again."[3] Although Saint-Saëns was asked, following the resounding success of the symphony at its French premiere in 1887, to compose another symphony, he would never again return to the genre.[4]
The Organ Symphony was the first of a spate of symphonic works by leading French composers. Édouard Lalo's Symphony in G minor was composed shortly after the London premier of Saint-Saëns' third (between August and November of 1886),[5] and premiered in February 1887 at the Concerts Lamoureux.[a] Also in 1886, Vincent d'Indy wrote his Symphony on a French Mountain Air, while César Franck composed his Symphony in the summer and autumn of 1887.[b][6] Later examples include Ernest Chausson's Symphony in B-flat, written in 1891, and Paul Dukas' Symphony in C composed in 1896.
History[edit]
Background[edit]
On July 4, 1885 the directors of the Philharmonic Society agreed to commission a new, specifically French orchestral work, preferring Charles Gounod, with Léo Delibes, Jules Massenet, and Saint-Saëns as backup candidates.[7] While the fate of petitions to these other composers remains unclear (if indeed they were ever despatched), the following year the Society arranged to bring Saint-Saëns to London as piano soloist in a concerto of his choice (Beethoven's fourth concerto), and he requested that his little-performed A-minor second symphony also be programmed.[8] The society responded by requesting "some symphonic work expressly for next season", to which Saint-Saëns expeditiously agreed, responding in a letter dated August 25, 1885 "without making a formal commitment, I can promise you that I will make every effort to respond to your wish, and to write a new symphony for the sake of the Philharmonic Society."[9] Based on correspondence between Saint-Saëns and both his publisher Durand and the Philharmonic Society's honorary secretary, Francesco Berger, composition of the new symphony was concentrated in the first months of 1886. The autograph score indicates that it was finished by April of that year.[10]
Saint-Saëns' decision to compose an actual symphony in response to the Philharmonic Society's request was unusual. First, almost thirty years had passed since the forty-nine year old composer had last written a symphony (in 1859), and his reputation as a concert composer derived principally from his piano concertos and symphonic poems. Second, the Society's interest in an orchestral or symphonic work by a French composer would have generally precluded an actual symphony since, as a genre, it had been largely ignored by French composers.[11] While symphonies were regularly performed in Parisian concert halls, appearing in more than half of the "Grands concerts" series that were comprised by the orchestral societies of Jules Pasdeloup, Édouard Colonne, and Charles Lamoureux, almost all were by Austro-German and Nordic composers, especially those of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schumann.[12][13] French symphonic composers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, such as Gossec, Leduc, or Méhul, were virtually unknown by the later nineteenth century. Symphonic efforts by later French composers, including those by Gounod and the early symphonies by Saint-Saëns himself, were very rarely performed, while the youthful symphony of Bizet would remain unknown until 1933. Rare exceptions, such as the 1869 premiere of Bizet's Roma Symphony by Pasdeloup at his Concerts populaires series, were not warmly received by Parisian concertgoers.[14]
Both Jann Pasler and Andrew Deruchie view Saint-Saëns choice to compose a symphony as "a direct response to ... Wagnerism in France".[15][16] In the period prior to his writing the symphony, Saint-Saëns had warned French composers against adopting Wagnerian techniques and ideas, not for their lack of merit or aesthetic value, but instead for their fundamental incompatibility with the French character and French sensibilities, exhorting: "young musicians, if you wish to be something, remain French!"[17] In 1871, Saint-Saëns and Romain Bussine had founded the Société nationale de musique specifically to showcase French music by organising both orchestral and chamber music concerts featuring French composers.[18] By 1885, however, Saint-Saëns found himself increasingly marginalised within the Société Nationale.[19] Vincent d'Indy and Henri Duparc, both disciples of the Belgian composer, César Franck, and enthusiastic proponents of Wagnerism, took control and opened the Société Nationale's programming to non-French, and especially German music. In Saint-Saëns' view, they were a "Caesarean [i.e. César Franck] and Wagnerian coterie" who had turned the Société Nationale into a "closed salon, unrelated to the intentions of its founders".[20]
It has therefore been suggested that, for Saint-Saëns, the symphony, in its form, represented "an appropriate vehicle for a musical response" to growing Wagnerism in France "by pursuing ... the very genre that, according to Wagner and at least some of his French advocates, had mandated the music drama after exhausting itself with Beethoven".[16] and that the symphony was an opportunity "to deliver a classical response to the concerns of Wagner and French Wagnerians".[15] Saint-Saëns himself did not ascribe a motivation to his decision to pen a symphony, beyond the interest in the genre that might be inferred from his request to have his earlier A-minor symphony programmed.[8]
Composition[edit]
Saint-Saëns likely started working on the symphony in the late summer of 1885, but was at the same time busy composing what would prove one of his most popular works, The Carnival of the Animals.[9] In a correspondence from February 1886, he wrote to his publisher Durand:
Instrumentation[edit]
The symphony is scored for large orchestra comprising 3 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, piano (two and four hands), organ, and strings.
Saint-Saëns' use of keyboard instruments – piano (scored for both two and four hands at various places) and the organ – are unusual additions to the orchestration for a late-Romantic symphony. Following Saint-Saëns' own explanation provided in the program notes he wrote for the London premiere, the decision to include both organ and piano keyboard in the instrumentation stemmed principally from his desire to innovate upon the traditional symphonic scoring practice. Mendelssohn had included the organ in his second symphony, "Lobgesang", but that work is a symphonic cantata, while Vincent d'Indy's Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français, which includes piano concertante, was only begun after the premiere of the Organ symphony. This instrumentation "had not previously factored in an established symphony".[38]
Saint-Saëns had appeared as the organ soloist in Bach's A minor Prelude and Fugue at a Philharmonic Society concert programmed on July 2, 1879 (where he also performed his second piano concerto), and it is possible that the presence of this instrument in the concert hall propelled to include the organ.[39][8] The instrument he had played at that concert was removed in 1882, replaced by a new organ made by Bryceson Brothers & Ellis , a fact of which Saint-Saëns was unaware. This new instrument had a different configuration and it has been suggested that the opening organ chords of the Maestoso finale would have been "disappointingly ineffective" as a result.[40]
Performances[edit]
The symphony was performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the 2009 BBC Proms season as the finale to a concert celebrating the 800th anniversary of the University of Cambridge, as the composer was awarded an honorary doctorate by the university in 1893.[44] In the 2011 season, it was performed again by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and in 2013, it returned to the BBC Proms, this time with Paavo Järvi conducting the Orchestre de Paris.[45] 2021 saw another return with Sir Mark Elder conducting The Hallé.[46]
Uses in popular culture[edit]
The entire main theme of the Maestoso was later adapted and used in the 1977 pop-song "If I Had Words" by Scott Fitzgerald and Yvonne Keeley. The Maestoso movement is also included as the final piece of music in the soundtrack for the film Impressions de France, which plays in the France Pavilion at Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort. The song and the symphony were used as the main theme in the 1995 family film Babe and its 1998 sequel Babe: Pig in the City and can be heard in the 1989 comedy film How to Get Ahead in Advertising.
The piece is also featured in the Blue Stars Drum and Bugle Corps 2008 show "Le Tour: Every Second Counts" in the finale. The tune of the symphony also serves as the national anthem of the micronation of the Empire of Atlantium under the name "Auroran Hymn". Although not included in the soundtrack, the Maestoso movement can be heard along with Dvořák's 9th Symphony in Emir Kusturica's film Underground. The Maestoso also served as the opening work on Laserium's first all-classical show (and the first to have an actual plot), Crystal Odyssey. The composer Philip Sparke created a brass band test piece based on the symphony which was then assigned to Fourth Section bands for the National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain in 2010.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, as part of the BBC Proms series, the organist Jonathan Scott performed, in an empty Royal Albert Hall, his own transcription of the entire symphony for solo organ.[49]