Musicon / Saint Saens / Saint Saens extending the formal boundaries of a symphony
Saint Saens extending the formal boundaries of a symphony
Usually it is deference to the demands of a “programme” that influences composers in extending the formal boundaries of a symphony, and when this is done the result is frequently a work which can only be called a symphony by courtesy. Saint-Saens, however, attempted an original excursion in his symphony in C minor, without any discoverable, or at least confessed, programmatic idea.
He laid the work out in two grand divisions, so as to have but one pause. Nevertheless in each division we can recognize, though as through a haze, the outlines of the familiar symphonic movements. In the first part, buried under a sequence of time designations like this: Adagio - Allegro moderato - Poco adagio , we discover the customary first and second movements, the former preceded by a slow introduction; in the second division we find this arrangement: Allegro moderato - Presto - Maestoso - Allegro , this multiplicity of terms affording only a sort of disguise for the regulation scherzo and finale, with a cropping out of reminiscences from the first part which have the obvious purpose to impress upon the hearer that the symphony is an organic whole.
Saint-Saens has also introduced the organ and a pianoforte with two players into the instrumental apparatus.
From: H. Krehbiel’s, How to Listen to Music; excerpts, edited by Musicon
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