Albert Roussel’s Symphony No. 3
Notes by TŌN bassoonist Peter Houdalis
In his childhood, Albert Roussel was taught music by his mother and studied in Paris at the Collège Stanislas. He spent his early adulthood serving in the French navy, where he went on multiple expeditions to Southeast Asia. Upon returning to France at the age of 25, he began studying music and eventually entered the Schola Cantorum in Paris, where he himself would become a composition teacher in 1902. Roussel’s career can be categorized into two distinct periods. Early on, he embraced the Impressionist style and incorporated inspiration from his naval journeys to Asia. The later portion of his career is defined by his use of neoclassical techniques.
Serge Koussevitsky, the longtime conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, commissioned Roussel’s Third Symphony as part of a celebration of the orchestra’s 50th anniversary. Roussel was part of an illustrious list of composers who were also commissioned for this celebration, including Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Hindemith, Respighi, and Copland. The symphony is densely packed with unique instrumentations and sounds that push the orchestral palette. It evokes elements of impressionist composers such as Ravel and Debussy.
The Third Symphony begins with a bombastic repetitive melody played by nearly the entire orchestra, which becomes the background for a jagged, syncopated theme in the violins and woodwinds. The ostinato eventually makes way for a luscious waltz-like theme to take over, completely flipping the mood on its head. These competing ideas go back and forth until eventually reaching a massive arrival about half-way through before the recapitulation ends the movement.
In the second movement, Roussel contrasts the previous movement with expressive soloistic writing. He uses a lighter orchestration, and this, combined with the melody-focused writing, provides for a more sensitive and reflective character. The brief third movement is an energetic dance. Roussel plays with various rhythms and accents to obscure the tempo. The fourth movement jumps to life with a series of perky woodwind melodies before the strings and brass join in. An expressive solo violin reels back the tempo for a brief interlude before the woodwinds reintroduce the theme at the original tempo and an accelerando drives the piece to a close.