Symphony No. 3, “Organ”

With his third and final symphony, Camille Saint-Saëns set out to write a masterpiece. At 51, he was — and had long been — one of the most famous musicians in France, equally successful as a composer, conductor, pianist, and organist, having served in this capacity for many years at the Madeleine, one of the landmark churches in Paris. His career started with the unqualified endorsement of such luminaries as Berlioz, Liszt, and Gounod, and he had come to be considered a luminary himself.

At the same time, he had reason to feel that some of his best efforts in the field of composition were not sufficiently appreciated. He had won great acclaim for his concertos and other virtuosic solo pieces. However, his symphonic poems were met with little enthusiasm in Paris, and his opera Samson and Delilah premiered, thanks only to Liszt’s unflagging support, in Weimar. At home, Saint-Saëns found himself locked in a rivalry with César Franck, his senior by 13 years, who wrote some of the best French Romantic instrumental music. Saint-Saëns was antagonized by Franck’s students and was increasingly isolated in the Société nationale de musique (which he had founded), a situation that, soon after the premiere of the Third Symphony, led to his resignation as the society’s president.

Saint-Saëns wanted to make a major statement, and the invitation of the London Philharmonic Society to write a symphony provided just the incentive he needed. In fact, Saint-Saëns had already sketched the work, and before long, he reported that the project was “well under way.” He played parts of his work-in-progress for Liszt in 1885, when the older man passed through Paris for the last time in his life. Saint-Saëns conducted the premiere of his completed symphony in London on May 19, 1886, to a standing ovation. With this concert, Saint-Saëns, who had long been well-known in England, definitively established his popularity there. The symphony proved to be a success in France, as well.

The composer himself wrote the first program note about his symphony, offering a detailed outline of the themes, referring to himself in the third person throughout:

This symphony is divided into two parts, in the manner of Saint-Saëns’s Fourth Piano Concerto and his Sonata for Piano and Violin. ... It nonetheless includes practically the traditional four movements. The first, checked in development, serves as an introduction to the Adagio. In the same manner, the scherzo is connected with the finale. The composer has thus endeavored to avoid in a certain measure the interminable repetitions that are now more and more disappearing from instrumental music.

The composer thinks that the time has come for the symphony to benefit [from] the progress of modern instrumentation.

Some of the innovations in orchestral writing in Saint-Saëns’s symphony clearly came from the symphonic poems of Liszt, who had used the organ in his Hunnenschlacht (Battle of the Huns). Saint-Saëns’s method of motivic transformation also follows Lisztian models to some extent. The four movements are telescoped into two parts, with the opening Allegro and the slow movement constituting the first part, and the scherzo and finale the second. Moreover, motivic relationships permeate all of the movements so that the entire work is rich in internal connections.

All four movements share a rising four-note motive, which is first heard in the oboe. Further versions are played by the trombones and soon afterward by the violins. A second, lyrical idea completes the opening Allegro’s melodic material.

We first hear the organ, for which the symphony is nicknamed, in the Poco adagio, in the first of many extended solos. Its entrance also transforms the initial motive as both as a hymnlike melody and as a fairly conspicuous accompaniment figure.

In the Allegro moderato that opens the symphony’s second half, we hear new variants of our motive, followed by the Trio section, distinguished by fast piano scales as a special orchestral color. A short contrapuntal section based on the motive serves as a transition to the finale, which begins with the lush sounds of the organ and the piano. The basic idea builds into a solemn chorale and then into a fugue reminiscent of Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony. The work ends with a glorious climax, magnificent in its effect.

Saint-Saëns was well aware of the symphony’s significance as a supreme achievement in his career. He never attempted to write another symphony; instead, he returned to writing operas, concertos, and chamber music. He wrote about the “Organ” Symphony in later years: “I have given all that I had to give. What I have done I shall never do again.”

— Peter Laki

Peter Laki is a musicologist and frequent lecturer on classical music. He is a visiting associate professor of music, emeritus, at Bard College and was The Cleveland Orchestra’s program annotator from 1990 to 2007.