The Symphony in C (1939) and the Symphony in Three Movements (1942-45) come so close together in Stravinsky's output that it is naturally instructive to compare them. The former is a more Apollonian, more classic work in four movements, while the latter is more Dionysian in character, particularly in its outer two movements.

Hearing the first movement in 1942, friends thought that the work was intended to be a symphonic piece with a concertante part for the piano. Later in his conversation book, Expositions and Developments, Stravinsky noted that he looked on his symphony as a concerto for orchestra. In 1943, while the work was still in progress, Stravinsky was encouraged by the author Franz Werfel to "try his hand at writing music" for the film, Song of Bernadette. Although this project was ultimately aborted, some of the music intended for the "Apparition of the Virgin" scene found its way into the slow movement of his symphony in progress. Here the concertante part was given to the harp, and in the third movement, composed subsequently, Stravinsky reconciled these two concertante instruments not only by combining them but also by spotlighting them as the two principal voices in a fugue placed at the center of the movement.

The work is less melodic than his Symphony in C, and formally speaking the work exhibits less of the dialectic and ultimate resolution of a typical symphony form than a "balance of contrasts." The first movement begins with an upward flourish that leads to the material dominated by the solo piano part. The visceral, Dionysian mood of his early Russian works, like The Rite of Spring - a language that had been absent for a number of years in Stravinsky's catalogue of works - has returned. Thus, it seems no coincidence to learn that in 1943 Stravinsky undertook a revision and rescoring of The Rite, although it was never performed, and fresh context with this score of 1912-13 seems to have left its mark.

In a program note written for the first performance, Stravinsky claimed that his symphony was absolute music and not program music. But he also allowed that it was possible to find there a reflection of contemporary experiences in "this our arduous time of sharp and shifting events, of despair and hope, of continual torments, of tension, and at last cessation and relief." In the early 1960s, in one of his conversation books with Robert Craft, Stravinsky went further and allowed that the first and third movements were "written under the sign of various world war events" that when seen in the newsreels of the day had frequently excited his musical imagination.

He allowed that the first movement was inspired by a documentary film "of scorchedearth tactics in China"; and the central episode for clarinet, piano and strings "was conceived as a series of instrumental conversations to accompany a cinematographic scene showing the Chinese people scratching and digging in their fields." The second movement, as mentioned, was drawn from an abortive project intended for "The Apparition of the Virgin" scene in Franz Werfel's Song of Bernadette, starring Jennifer Jones. But the third movement, Stravinsky also confessed, was in part "a musical reaction to the newsreels and documentaries that [he] had seen of goose-stepping soldiers."

Stravinsky had lived mainly in France and Switzerland after 1911, and he finally took French citizenship in the 1930s. Then, in the summer of 1939, came another time of turning, and by September, with renewed world conflict involving many of the principal parties of the Great War already underway, Stravinsky packed his belongings, left France, and headed for the United States. The winds of war had once again driven him from his home, and in an interview with the San Francisco Examiner on December 12 he lamented: "War can never be good for the arts. The cannons speak, not the violins - not even the cymbals. . ." Tellingly, one of the first gestures he made in his new residence was to set the national anthem of his newly adopted country.