The Symphony and the Artist's Creed: Camille Saint-Saëns and His Third Symphony

Camille Saint-Saëns’s third, the so-called Organ Symphony, is still popular with the concert-going public despite the difficulties of its performance and despite all the changes of public taste that have been unfavorable to the “big” and especially the “Weltanschauungs” symphony of the 19th century. At the same time, it is rather unpopular with the musicological community: there is very little substantial and reliable literature on the work or, indeed, on its composer. ¹