Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony and 'Frenchness'
Note: the following essay was written in partial satisfaction of the course requirements for “Music in fin-de-siècle Paris”.
And then, the heavens open up. From a moment of serene quiet, the organ, in all its glory, lets loose a powerful chord that shook the very floor of St. James Hall. The sound doesn’t linger, and soon gives way to a shimmering chorale of strings and four-hands piano. By the time Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Organ Symphony” reaches its finale, orchestral sounds have been combined and rearranged in dazzling orchestrations. What an impression these colors must have made on their audience in 1886, to an audience that had never heard such sounds in a concert hall. The impact of those apotheotic, brilliant moments of music has hardly diminished over the years - Gabriel Fauré guessed correctly when he teased Saint-Saëns that the symphony would live much longer than the two composers, “even when putting our ages together!”
That the Organ Symphony was premiered in London’s St. James Hall and not France was a product of several factors - the symphony itself was a commission from London’s Philharmonic society, and Saint-Saëns’ knowledge of the organ at St. James Hall influenced him towards its inclusion in the work. But the setting of the premiere undersells the importance of this symphony as an embodiment of the composer’s ideals about French music, and a response to both German modernism and German classicism. Through charm and color, through eclecticism and subversion of expectations, Saint-Saëns imbued his symphony with a vitality and energy that encapsulated his own version of ‘Frenchness’.
Like his contemporaries, Saint-Saëns was acutely aware of his native country’s musical contributions and found himself concerned with its diminished standing in the world of art music following the German-Austrian geniuses of the 18th and 19th centuries. In response, he got involved with various musical societies, some of them, like the Société Nationale de Musique (which he co-founded) devoted to promoting French music and composers exclusively. He wrote frequently about French music, sometimes criticizing what he saw as an excess of Wagnerian influence. And in his own life and performing career he attempted to bring greater international prestige to his country.
When one looks at how these mid to late 19th century French composers sought to reestablish France’s ‘voice’, it’s easy to be fooled into a Germany-France dichotomy. But the details paint a different picture. The Société Nationale, part of that burgeoning effort to support new French music, would (at first) only perform works by French composers, at the exclusion of foreign works. But inside of that restriction, this club supported Wagnerians and anti-Wagnerians alike, an eclecticism that Saint-Saëns was proud of. The Société Nationale included everyone from Fauré and Saint-Saëns to D’Indy and Franck. The French, it seemed, were not interested in defining their art in terms any more narrow than ‘made in France’.
Saint-Saëns himself found no interest in simply tossing aside the powerful formal structures of the past for modernism’s sake, and his pieces frequently adapt traditionally German forms closely. The elegance of these established forms were a value that Saint-Saëns would cherish his entire life. The very decision to write the Organ Symphony and not a suite or a programmatic symphonic work is a testament to the composer’s affinity for the aesthetic ideals of the German tradition. But in choosing to engage with that tradition, Saint-Saëns set himself up to subvert its expectations and do something distinct and new. He wanted to tackle the German giants head on, a French response to Beethoven’s 9th and the whole body of Germanic symphonic works, and a masterpiece to stand tall next to them. Saint-Saëns didn’t want to avoid the German tradition. He wanted to conquer it.
One need look no further to see this engagement, this dialogue, then Saint-Saëns’ choice of key. As Andrew Daruchie points out in The French Symphony in the Fin-de-seicle, The opening of the Allegro is not just strongly reminiscent of Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony, the sketches placed it in the same key - B minor. The allusion is too strong to ignore. Saint-Saëns claimed practical concerns when he eventually changed the key to C minor, but he would have been well aware of its significance as the key of Beethoven’s 5th, the inaugural minor-to-major, tragedy-to-triumph symphony. Like Brahms’ First Symphony before and Mahler’s Second after, Saint Saen’s C minor-to-major symphony was aware of its being a response to and a dialogue with the per aspera ad astra themes that Beethoven brought to the symphonic medium.
Speaking of Brahms’s First Symphony, the similarities between it and the Organ Symphony run deep, and poses something of an irony given Brahms’s cool reception in France. As far as the French were concerned, Brahms was formal to a fault - his immaculate craftsmanship resulted in music that seemed cold, and lacked melodic interest. But Saint-Saëns, even when focusing on the craft and formal integrity that Brahms held so dearly, never lost sight of the importance of his music’s surface. The Organ Symphony has architecture, it develops and fragments ideas, and follows much of the proper German symphonic procedures. However, it also has charm and directness, singable melodies and memorable moments from a first encounter, in contrast to the dense Brahms works that only seem to reveal their full beauty after study and repeated listening. The stormy strings of the Allegro, the delicate melody of the Adagio, the fiery rhythmic drive of the the scherzo - all of these have immediacy to their beauty that needs little analysis to truly experience. If Saint-Saëns had no interest in discarding German development, he was hardly interested in focusing on it exclusively. This difference is particularly evident in the slow movement of the symphony, where Saint-Saëns offers up a melody of profound beauty and lyricism. Daruchie’s dissection of this passage show that under the hood lies motivic relationships and a logic that drives the melodic material, and harmonically Saint-Saëns throws in little surprises to keep the phrases from being completely predictable or square. But none of that holds the melody back from a directness and immediacy of lyricism that carries its listener away on first listen.
Daruchie is also quick to point out how both Brahms’s First Symphony and the Organ Symphony respond directly to the musical ideals of Beethoven’s Ninth. Each tells a narrative of dark to light, and the light is embodied in a triumphant chorale, a Freudenthema of sorts. Unlike Beethoven, both Brahms and Saint-Saëns refuse to incorporate choir, choosing to score their apotheosis for the orchestra alone. But where Brahms scores his chorale for strings, that foundational family of the ensemble, Saint-Saëns’ Freudenthema unfolds in vivid colors, new to the symphony - four hands piano, and then organ. (Daruchie) The very decision to include these instruments at all is noteworthy, especially piano (which would not be used again in this manner until Prokofiev and Shostakovitch nearly 40 years later). Saint-Saëns explained their inclusion in his program notes: “The composer, believing that symphonic works should now be allowed to benefit by the progress of modern instrumentation, has made up his orchestra in manner following…”
It may have been more accurate to say the composer believed that the symphony should benefit from all musical progress. For all of its similarities to other German symphonies and its dialogue with that tradition, Saint-Saëns was trying new things in the Organ Symphony, borrowing liberally from eclectic traditions. In addition to the Germanic development and fragmentation on display in the work, the work heavily incorporates a kind of Lisztian development - nearly all the melodic material in the symphony in some way derives from a cyclic theme that slowly transforms over the course of the music. (It is worth noting that Saint-Saëns dedicated the Organ Symphony to Liszt’s memory 2 months after the premiere on the occasion of his friend’s death.) This would hardly be the first time that cyclic themes and thematic transformation held an important place in a symphony, but Saint-Saëns’ remarkable execution of those processes creates a work that blurs the line between its Beethovenian influence and its late 19th century sound.
There are always expectations with a symphony. For centuries now, audiences have known what a symphony is supposed to look like - 4 movements, each with their own expected tempos, each in a particular key, and each usually molded into a slim handful of expected forms. Saint-Saëns was certainly not the first to subvert those expectations, nor would he be the last, but he used those assumptions to his advantage, to create surprise and novelty in ways he found compelling. His first rejection is that of the 4-movement form. The Organ Symphony includes all of the expected tempos, but they are fused into halves instead of quarters - the symphony is functionally in 2 large movements. Saint-Saëns rejects the conventions of key relationships as well, and the Adagio of this symphony plays out in Db, rather than the expected key of G or perhaps A minor. He sets us hip own relationship of tonal centers throughout the work, focusing on a Neapolitan connection rather than a perfect cadential one.
That Neapolitan relationship points to Saint-Saëns’ use of harmony in this work as his own way of creating surprise. The composer’s harmonic language is hardly groundbreaking in comparison to his contemporaries, but it remains noteworthy in the context of the symphonic genre. In addition to those Neapolitan connections, mediant relationships abound, even in the so-called Freudenthema of the 4th movement. Lines blur between sequencing and modulation throughout the work. And perhaps most interesting, the most Wagnerian moment in the symphony evades expectation completely. Another comparison here is inevitable - both Brahms’s First Symphony and the Organ Symphony employ a sort of secondary chorale in the closing moments of their finale to bring their respective works to final affirmative conclusions. Both are glorious in their own right. But a telling difference - Brahms’s chorale, rich and filled with secondary dominants, ends squarely on a dominant chord, transitioning effortlessly into the final cadential figures. Saint-Saëns’ counterpart, a string of fully diminished sevenths sequenced together, leans towards Wagnerian in its harmonic tension. But it’s ‘resolution’ is suddenly and unexpectedly robbed of that tension - the music lands on the relative minor and immediately picks up in tempo, off to something else entirely. The ‘arrival’ never came.
One final way in which Saint-Saëns evades expectation - and an element of this symphony that is rarely discussed - is the more subtle rhythmic and metrical nuances that run throughout. Even in the opening moments of the symphony, the violin line - a cross between the Dies Irae chant and Schubert’s Unfinished - places emphasis on the ‘wrong’ sixteenth notes. Without much else as far as context, it’s difficult to feel the pulse in this passage as the written one. When other instruments finally join in and recontextualize the string line, it’s slightly disorienting. Similarly, near the end of the Allegro, a simple repeated dyad, stripped of any other context and given a conflicting harmonic rhythm, suggests to the listener a pulse that differs from the written one. Again, when the orchestra joins, we are caught off-guard. This rhythmic versatility is a running theme throughout the symphony - the work frequently unfolds in 3-bar or 12-bar phrases rather than 4-bar or 8-bar ones (a fact that Saint-Saëns himself pointed to in his program notes), and his last movement contains moments that evade any sense of meter at all, instead incorporating elongated time signatures and an unstressed pulse.
This last point ties into some of the French heritage that Saint-Saëns was so invested in. The rich tradition of French Baroque music that Saint-Saëns and others were so interested in reviving was notable for its rhythmic vitality. France had a history of dance music, dotted rhythms, and rhythmic versatility. It hardly comes as a surprise that Saint-Saëns’ contribution to the symphonic repertoire leans into less conventional rhythmic elements. Quite a bit of French heritage is on display in this work, in fact. It’s not hard to interpret the inclusion of organ and piano as a nod to the country’s rich tradition of keyboard music, from Couperin to Rameau (the latter of which Saint-Saëns had a large part in rediscovering and republishing). Even the ties between the opening Allegro and the contour of the Dies Irae allude to France’s distant history as one of the most important players in the development of chant and polyphony.
Saint-Saëns said in regard to his Symphony that “I gave everything to it I was able to give. What I have here accomplished, I will never achieve again.” This rather dramatic statement nevertheless points to the magnitude of the Organ Symphony. France would never really become a nation of symphonists - the number of frequently performed French symphonies number somewhere in the single digits. Instead, the nation would find its own way to stake out its contribution to the musical world, through symphonic poems, suites, chamber music, choral works, and opera. The turn of the century would bring French composers of a new kind, ones that would help lead the charge into the new musical world of the 20th century - Debussy and Ravel, Satie and Poulenc, Messiaen and Boulez. France’s relevance was fully restored in due time. But Saint-Saëns proved that his country could produce a great symphony if it wanted - that it could incorporate German forms but say something new with them, that it could engage with Beethoven and Brahms but improve on the formula with Lisztian influence and French eclecticism. In creating a symphony that rivaled those of Beethoven, Saint-Saëns indeed accomplished something that he would never achieve again. But in raising up his native country’s eclectic musical language and heritage, in contributing music of immense worth and international prestige, in creating a masterpiece… Saint-Saëns achieved that which his native country would achieve again and again and again in the years to come.
-Joseph Cieslak
Bibliography:
Deruchie, Andrew. “Camille Saint-Saëns, Third Symphony” in French Symphony at the Fin de Siècle: Style, Culture, and the Symphonic Tradition. Boydell & Brewer, 2013.
Nectoux, Jean-Michel. The Correspondence of Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré. Translated by J. Barrie Jones. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2004.
Pasler, Jann. Camille Saint-Saëns and His World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Ring, Kenneth. Psychological Perspective on Camille Saint-Saëns. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002.