Program Notes: Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony

CLAUDE DEBUSSY 
La Damoiselle élue 
BORN: August 22, 1862, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a suburb of Paris, France 
DIED: March 25, 1918, in Paris, France 
WORK COMPOSED: 1887–1889 
WORLD PREMIERE: April 8, 1893, in Paris, France 

What to Listen For: 

• A chorus of soprano and alto voices instills an ethereal atmosphere. 

• In place of the usual grouping of four beats (known as 4/4 time), shifting groups of 12, nine, six and four beats create a supple, often dreamlike vocal line. 

Playfully described by Claude Debussy as “a little oratorio in a mystical and slightly pagan vein,” La Damoiselle élue sets the poem “The Blessed Damozel” (an archaic form of “damsel”) by the English poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882). 

After a prelude of solemn, gently gliding strings, the chorus recounts how the Damoiselle “leaned out / from the gold bar of Heaven” hoping to see her beloved, who is still alive in the earthly realm. We can already espy a bit of the “pagan vein” in which Heaven is rendered in French, not as the affirmatively Christian “Paradis” but as a potentially pantheistic “ciel” or sky. The Damoiselle’s billowing robe is portrayed by the Narrator, who sings a hypnotic repetition of the D note cushioned by sighing scales from the flutes, clarinets and later, the violins. 

Accompanied by a harp, the chorus chants “The sun was gone now,” which culminates into a radiant chord played by the entire orchestra — except for the flutes, whose wafting melody illustrates how “...the curled moon / Was like a little feather.”  

Finally, the Damoiselle appears, pining “I wish that he were come to me.” Winds and strings respond in turn, yet offer scant comfort. At times florid, serene and pleading, the Damoiselle’s aria is the heart of this “little oratorio.” She envisions the reunion with her beloved, “We two will lie in the shadow of / That living mystic tree,” but soon succumbs to tears. Brief solos by the cor anglais, horn and a single harp note return us to a variation of the opening — and now guardedly hopeful — prelude. 

HENRI DUTILLEUX 
Correspondances for Soprano and Orchestra 
BORN: January 22, 1916, in Angers, France 
DIED: May 22, 2013, in Paris, France 
WORK COMPOSED: 2002–2004 
WORLD PREMIERE: September 5, 2003, in Berlin, Germany 

What to Listen For: 

• The composer embedded what he called “beacons” throughout the work, such as the similarly hushed, murky moments heard at end of Gong (1), À Slava et Galina and Gong (2) as well as discernible (and sometimes jolting) allusions to other composers. 

The composer embedded what he called “beacons” throughout the work, such as the similarly hushed, murky moments heard at end of Gong (1), À Slava et Galina and Gong (2) as well as discernible (and sometimes jolting) allusions to other composers. 

Premiered a few months before Henri Dutilleux’s 88th birthday, Correspondances is a meditation on listening, friendship, artistic struggle and mortality. While contemplating this six-part song cycle, he hoped “to lean in the direction of incantation,” which helps account for his choice of intense, often feverish texts from an eclectic collection of poets and philosophers. 

Sung as a spellbinding lullaby, Gong (1) proffers a work by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke: “Timbre / No longer for ears... : sound / which, like a deeper ear, / hears us, who only seem / to be hearing” arguably encapsulates the composer’s credo. Prizing sumptuous timbres and adhering to his own approach to melody, Dutilleux refused to conform to the dogmatic strictures of the post-World War II serialists (Boulez, Stockhausen, et al.), and declined to follow any trend, style or movement during his long life.  

Danse cosmique addresses Nataraja, a form assumed by the Hindu deity Shiva. The refrain by poet and ethnomusicologist Prithwindra Mukherjee, “Flames O Flames,” reminds us that this depiction of Shiva is typically seen dancing within a ring of fire that represents the cosmic cycle of creation and destruction. The serpentine phrase in the middle of the song, “Des foudres se font entendre au rythme des éclairs” (“Thunders peal in a lightning rhythm”), is another “beacon” — the downward smeared chord in the violins, violas and cellos allude to the French composer Olivier Messiaen, whose stubborn individuality inspired Dutilleux. 

After an Interlude featuring solos by the tuba and accordion, À Slava et Galina sets a letter from the exiled Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Writing to cellist Mstislav Rostropovich (known worldwide as “Slava”) and his wife, the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, Solzhenitsyn conveys his gratitude for their friendship and support. In honor of his friend and collaborator Rostropovich, Dutilleux frames the novelist’s haunting line with cellos and burbling, trilling clarinets: “you didn’t even tell me of the growing constraints and harassment you were subjected to.” Borrowing the melody of the Holy Fool’s lament from Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godounov. “Yours always... always... always” evaporates into silence. 

Continuing his predilection for post-premiere revision, Dutilleux added Gong (2) in 2004. This short movement inserts a mystical text by Rilke between two letters — the lengthy À Slava et Galina and the concluding, De Vincent à Théo, a missive from Vincent van Gogh to his brother. The unwittingly immortal painter’s confession must have resonated with an aging composer still obsessed with fashioning singular instrumental hues: “As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see.” 

THIERRY ESCAICH 
La Barque solaire 
BORN: May 8, 1965, in Nogent-sur-Marne, France 
WORK COMPOSED: 2008 
WORLD PREMIERE: October 11, 2008, in Berlin, Germany 

What to Listen For: 

• The organ fills multiple roles, from contributing ebullient solo passages and emphatic chords to discreetly accompanying ever-changing groups of instruments. 

• Resembling a paddle, the slapstick is made of two wooden boards joined at one end by a hinge. Rapidly sliced through the air by a percussionist, the boards separate and slap together, sounding like a whip-like crack fused with an impossibly fast handclap. 

In English, “barque” means a grand, three- (or more) masted sailing ship, but the original French word denotes a much smaller, agile boat. La Barque solaire refers to the daily voyage of Rā, sun god and supreme deity of Egyptian mythology. At dawn, Rā, usually depicted with a falcon’s head crowned by a solar disk, ferries the sun across the sky to the horizon. At sunset, Rā reaches the horizon and descends into the Underworld. After a perilous journey, he emerges to begin the day — and the cycle of life — anew. 

Three bursts of thrumming timpani launch this single-movement symphonic poem for organ and orchestra. A wash of colorfully syncopated, almost funky percussion immediately yields to accelerating waves of strings and winds. The slapstick, which marks key transitions in La Barque solaire, signals a momentary ebbing of sound. Pizzicato strings, shuddering splashes of brass, and the rest of the orchestra roll and rise towards another crest, only to recede into pools of glassy textures. 

Meekly ascending organ chords in the middle section invokes the music of Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992). Commissioned to celebrate Messiaen’s centenary, Thierry Escaich honors the influential composer and organist not with quotations but through contemplative interludes before the penultimate climax and the surging, convulsive conclusion. 

CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS 
Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, “Organ” 
BORN: October 9, 1835, in Paris, France 
DIED: December 16, 1921, in Algiers, Algeria 
WORK COMPOSED: 1886 
WORLD PREMIERE: May 19, 1886, in London, England 

What to Listen For: 

• The organ surfaces in the middle of the first movement after quietly creeping pizzicato (i.e., plucked) notes by the cellos and double basses. 

The organ surfaces in the middle of the first movement after quietly creeping pizzicato (i.e., plucked) notes by the cellos and double basses. 

Despite his renown as a keyboard virtuoso and dependable composer of picturesque symphonic poems, Camille Saint-Saëns sought greater recognition. He understood that in France of the 1880s, his peers and progenitors achieved enduring fame in the opera house or by writing a great symphony. 

A letter from the Royal Philharmonic Society in London proved fortuitous. Invited to perform a piano concerto, the composer agreed and inquired about adding his Second Symphony (1859) to the concert. Extending a storied tradition of commissioning composers — including Beethoven’s Ninth and Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony — the Society instead requested “quite a new work.” 

Saint-Saëns accepted, telling his publisher “there will be much of an experiment in this terrible thing.” Daringly, the symphony was divided into two movements rather than the expected four. The first brackets the Allegro moderato with an initial and closing adagio; the second merges the scherzo and the finale.  

Designed to avoid “the endless resumptions and repetitions” heard in earlier symphonies, this unusual form helps emphasize the symphony’s chief innovation: the lyrical transformation of the main and secondary themes. Heard after the brief (11 measures!) opening Adagio, the main theme is “somber and agitated in character” according to the composer. Stated by the strings and hinting at “Dies Irae” (“Day of Wrath” in Latin) from the Mass for the Dead, the theme is fragmented and reshaped throughout the Symphony into captivatingly distinct yet audibly related melodies. 

The London premiere was received with acclaim, but the subsequent debut of “the terrible thing” in Paris sealed the composer’s reputation in France and the “Organ” Symphony’s permanent place in the repertory. Saint-Saëns admitted, “I have given all that I had to give,” and perhaps recognizing it would be his last symphonic work, added, “what I have done I shall never do again.” 

All notes by Christopher DeLaurenti © 2023