Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78: Organ Symphony

The Symphony No. 3 in C minor, popularly known as the "Organ Symphony", was completed in 1886 at what could be considered the artistic peak of Saint-Saens’ career.  The composer said of the work, "I gave everything to it I ws able to give. What I have here accomplisehd, I will never achieve again."  Seeming to recognize that it would be his last attempt at the symphonic form, the composer filled the work with virtuoso piano passages, brilliant Romantic-era orchestral writing, and the sound of a cathedral-sized pipe organ.  The composer did note in his own analysis of the symphony that, while it was cast in two movements, "the traditional four-movement structure is maintained."  One of the symphony’s outstanding and original features is its use of keyboard instruments, with piano, scored for both two and four hands at various places, and the pipe organ.  The work uses its thematic material, derived from fragments of plainsong, as a unifying device as each melody appears in more than one movement.  Saint-Saens also employed a method of thematic variation borrowed from his friend Franz Liszt, to whose memory he dedicated the work.