A Symphony of Three Orchestras (1976) | Compositions

Instrumentation: Orch I: 0.0.0.0/3.2.2(II=btrbn).1-timp-strings(8.0.4.3.2); Orch II:0.0.2(II=bcl).Ebcl.0-0.0.0.0-perc:t.bells/vib/xyl/marimba/long drum with snares/low tom-t-strings(2.0.0.3.1); Orch III: 2(I, II=picc).picc.3(III=corA).0.3(III=dbn)-2.0.0.0-perc:anvil/bell tree/2susp.cym/2SD/tamb/2tam-t-strings(8.0.4.0.2)
Dedication: Dedicated to the New York Philharmonic and Pierre Boulez, its music director
View Score
Buy Score: Associated Music Publishers
Manuscripts: Paul Sacher Stiftung

Premiere: Feb 17, 1977/ New York Philharmonic / Pierre Boulez/ Avery Fisher Hall, New York, NY

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In this work the orchestra is divided into three smaller groups as in the multiple orchestra works of Mozart. The first orchestra is made up of brass, strings and timpani; the second of clarinets, piano, vibraphone, chimes, marimba, solo violins, basses and a group of ‘cellos’ the third of flutes, oboes, bassoons, horns, violins, violas, basses and non-pitched percussion.

The opening music, which starts in the highest registers of the three orchestras and slowly descends as the trumpet announces one of the themes heard at various times in Orchestra I and ends in a series of rapidly plunging passages, was suggested by the beginning of Hart Crane’s The Bridge, which describes New York harbor and the Brooklyn Bridge:

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty —

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
—Till elevators drop us from our day …

The opening descent immediately leads to a giocoso theme played by bassoons, the central idea of the first movement of Orchestra III, that begins the main section of the score. From here to the coda, twelve differently characterized move- ments, each with its own related themes, are heard, four played by each orchestra. The four movements of each orchestra, while differing in expression and speed, are related by spatial location and instrumental color and also by characteristic harmonies and rhythms. Each of the twelve movements is introduced while another movement of another orchestra is being played, briefly surfaces to be heard alone and then becomes the background for another entrance of another movement. Thus there is a continual overlapping and changing flow of music. The listener is not meant, on first hearing, to identify the details of this con- tinually shifting web of sound any more than he is to identify the modulations in Tristan and Isolde, but rather to hear and grasp the character of this kaleidoscope of musical themes as they are presented in varying contexts.

The main section is brought to a stop by a series of repeated short, loud chords for the full orchestra that shatter the previous flow. The score ends in a coda that recalls fragments of the previous music, alternating repetitive passages and expressive bursts and finally sinks to the lowest registers of the three orchestras as the beginning is remembered.

Although not in any sense an attempt to express the poem of Hart Crane in music, many of the musical ideas were suggested by it and by others of his works.

– Elliott Carter

Recordings (2)

Pierre Boulez: Carter: A Symphony of Three Orchestras; Varèse
Sony SMK 68 334 (1995)
New York Philharmonic, Pierre Boulez, conductor
Elliott Carter: A Symphony of Three Orchestras; A Mirror on Which to Dwell
Columbia M 35171 (1980)
New York Philharmonic, Pierre Boulez, conductor | Susan Davenny Wyner, soprano | Speculum Musicae, Richard Fitz, conductor