Usually I have some loose plan for what I'm going to post about over the coming two or three weeks--I've read this or that, or listened to this or that, and intend to write about it in the not very distant future. It's not a schedule but it's a guide. This symphony, however, was not in the plan. I was going through some of the huge number of old LPs that I acquired several years ago, most of which I haven't listened to, and wondering if I should cull them further. I picked this one up and thought it looked like a candidate. Was I likely ever even to play it, much less care about it?

I knew Honegger's name, and that he was a member of a group of 20th century French composers known as Les Six, and that he had composed Pacific 231, a short work that was said to be a musical description of a steam locomotive accelerating. Those few facts, recalled from a music history course taken more than fifty years ago, were absolutely all I knew of Honegger. In my mind I had lumped him in with the rather large number of somewhat faceless (to me) modern composers who had probably produced some capable but not very interesting work--not very interesting to me, anyway. 

Why not listen to it once, though? I said to myself, and I did. The LP contains two short symphonies, one on each side. I put on side one. And as you have probably guess I liked this work very much, listening to it several times over the next couple of days.

One might quibble about its being called a symphony, as it's written entirely for strings except for the appearance of a solo trumpet in the third movement. It was begun in the late '30s--I suppose I should specify the late 1930s, as we are only five years away from 2030--finished in 1941, and first performed in 1942. In other words, it was begun in the darkening shadows of world war and completed when the storm had burst. Honegger was living in occupied France.

I don't think I noticed that information in the liner notes until after my first hearing, or perhaps I saw it  without really consciously taking it in, but with or without such prompting I found myself seeing grim monochrome images of that period, the images that would have been seen in newsreels: anxious crowds in streets, roads, and railway stations; silhouettes of aircraft against a gray sky--images of fear and escape. The imagery is appropriate, and it's not a stretch to read the atmosphere of the times into the music.

I think the notes on the LP describe the music well, so I'll just quote their uncredited author: 

The music is darkly serious and brooding, alternately violent and despairing in the first movement. The second continues the mood, rising slowly to a dramatic surge, followed by an ebb. Only in the bi-tonal and polyrhythmic third movement is the air cleared, leading to a final Presto in which the first violins and trumpet intone a triumphant chorale-like melody

"Bi-tonal and polyrhythmic" are not promising descriptions to me. They would--if I had read them before hearing the work--have led me to suppose that this was another technically complex but somewhat dry 20th century work. But it's very much alive emotionally, and you don't need to know anything technical to feel its "darkly serious and brooding" atmosphere.

Here are some notes I jotted down for each movement as I was listening:

1: Tense, brooding, busy, martial, somber,  uneasy. Monochrome.

2: Sad. Fading hope. Loss. Yearning. Short rhythmically memorable motifs.

3: Quick, nervous, later threatening, till trumpet appears briefly like sunlight near the end. Triumphant. 

This is a Supraphon release, originally issued in 1961. (Supraphon was/is a Czech company, which means that this was a Soviet or at least Soviet-approved production.) My copy is an American re-issue, from 1966, as you might guess from the ridiculous and inappropriate cover art.

I haven't gotten to side two yet. It's another short symphony, Number 3, subtitled "Liturgical."