Symphony No.3 in G minor Op.42

Albert Roussel (1869-1937)

Symphony No.3 in G minor Op.42

Allegro vivo

Adagio

Vivace

Allegro con spirito

While there are more distinguished French symphonies than there are Italian and Spanish put together, France is not the richest of the great musical nations in this particular respect. In fact, but for the intervention of a Belgian, there would probably be even fewer examples than there are now. César Franck had taken French citizenship long before he wrote his Symphony in D minor but what enabled him to create the first great French symphony after Berlioz’s    Symphonie fantastique was not his adopted nationality but a significant teutonic element, inherited from his German mother, in his DNA. Franck’s example was an inspiration to the next generation of French symphonists – primarily Ernest Chausson, Paul Dukas and Albert Roussel – before Olivier Messiaen transcended the situation with Turangalîla.

Unlike Chausson, Roussel did not study with Franck. Having trained as a naval cadet and having spent the first five years of his adult life in the French Navy, he turned to music as a profession only in 1894, by which time Franck had been dead for four years. He did, however, study composition with Vincent d’Indy, Franck’s devoted disciple at the Schola Cantorum, where he was instructed in the articles of the Franckian faith. The most important of these was the so-called “cyclic” principle of construction – according to which the separate movements of a major composition are linked by the recurring appearances and pervasive influence of one high-profile melodic idea. Even at the comparatively late stage in his career when he wrote his Third Symphony – following a commission from Serge Koussevitsky to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestras in 1930 – Roussel still hadn’t forgotten about cyclic construction. Everything else had changed in his music, which was now neo-classical in concept and far more astringent in harmony and aggressive in rhythm than before: Stravinsky and Prokofiev have replaced Franck and Debussy as the main outside influences.

Remarkably, the all-important cyclic theme, on which the unity of the work will depend, is introduced not at the beginning of the first movement but in the middle of it. Up to that point the most arresting idea is the urgent message delivered by woodwind and violins over the pounding rhythms in the opening bars. The tight rhythmic grip is relaxed only for the entry of a contrastingly lyrical melody on a solitary flute supported by little more than a line of counterpoint on the strings below. The rhythmic grip is promptly re-applied and intensified until, at the height of a long crescendo, the cyclic theme – just five notes in a distinctive jagged line – is proclaimed by woodwind and brass at the top of their voices. With that formative event still in mind, as the other main themes are further developed and recapitulated, it becomes apparent that all of them, and the flute melody in particular, are related to that five-note motif.

Although the five-note motif is not heard again in the first movement, it reappears in a close, if more shapely, variant on oboe at the beginning of the Adagio. Violins and violas immediately adopt it and extend it and, athough another attractive idea is introduced by woodwind at a quicker Andante tempo, that opening melody dominates the movement. It is the thematic basis of the comparatively brisk fugue which occupies the middle section and which culminates in a broad statement of the five-note motif in something like its original jagged shape. Even so, as the last section of the movement so expressively indicates and as the closing violin solo confirms, its influence here is benignly melodious.

The Vivo third movement is a high-spirited scherzo, an ingeniously designed mosaic of short thematic gems in a variety of brilliant colours. Self-contained though it might seem, however, it is vigorous in keeping in touch with the cyclic motif – most prominently when strings and woodwind fling down the first three notes in a characteristically jagged gesture shortly after the beginning of the movement and again towards the end.

The Allegro con spirito combines the playfulness of the scherzo with the rhythmic aggression of the opening Allegro vivo. But, as the last movement of a closely integrated symphony, it has a quite different, partly retrospective and partly conclusive structural function. So it sets out to achieve its goal in two stages. First it slows down its headlong progress to accommodate an Andante interlude in which a solo violin gently ruminates on the cyclic motif. Then, near the end of the movement, it accelerates the basic tempo towards an anything but gentle reminder of the same five-note theme, which twice bounces onto a violent discord before landing happily on the G major chord we have all been waiting for.