I. –  II. Andante III. Con moto

 Besides the Symphony of Psalms, during his long life Stravinsky also wrote three orchestral symphonies. The E flat major was written in his early youth, the four movement C major came shortly after he settled in America in 1939, while the three movement symphony was composed towards the end of the Second World War. For a while, he also refered to it as the “war symphony.” In his recorded conversations with Robert Craft, Stravinsky makes occasional references to the events that inspired it. He recalled seeing newsreel and documentary film footage, recalled the frightening spectacle of marching soldiers, and well as the memory of a concert tour in Munich in 1932 (the year before Hitler came to power), when he could see the notorious brown shirts in action, and almost became a victim of them himself. The exposition of the fugue in the closing movement, and the movement's end, according to Stravinsky, was the music of the ascension of the Allied forces.
 “But enough of that” – he added quickly at the end of the recorded interview, stressing that the Symphony is most certainly not programme music. “Composers combine notes. That is everything. It is not their job to talk about what world events affect their music and how.” A conspicuous feature of the composition is that the piano and harp play an important role in the musical material. The piano is present in the first movement, while the harp is added to the customary instrumental forces in the second. In the final movement – the Fugue – Stravinsky combines them both.