This is a large-scale late-Romantic symphony, one of the last in the small line of Wagner-influenced French symphonies that includes works by Franck, Chausson, and d'Indy. It is lushly scored and almost over-ripe in its constant flux of enriched chromatic chords. It also shares a predilection of the times for portraying seascapes in musical terms.

Charles Tournemire (1870 - 1939) was part of the line of French organ masters and composers who occupied the great churches of Paris. Tournemire's post was the basilica of Sainte-Clotilde, where he was organist from 1898 to 1939, presiding at one of Cavaillé-Coll's greatest instruments.

He wrote prolifically for organ, including one set of works comprising 51 organ suites based on Gregorian chants, one for each Sunday of the church year, but he composed prolifically for other media and wrote eight orchestral symphonies.

He has a special attachment to the Isle of Ouessant, known as the "sentinel island," which stands in a rapid current of the Gulf Stream of the Bretagne (Brittany) Peninsula near Brest. He won a major musical prize in 1903 by composing a cantata called Le sang de la Sirene, based on a Bretagne legend. His first wife also interested him in the place, and was part of his decision to spend every summer there. Later in his life he did much of his composing in an old windmill on the island.

It is very easy to accept a pictorial content related to the jagged rocks of the Ouessant coastline, and the waves smashing onto them, in the surging sounds and rugged melodies of the fast part of the first movement. The symphony all told is about 48 minutes long, but is in only three movements. The opening movement is by far the longest, a musical structure of Mahleresque musical proportions at 21 minutes.

It begins with a Prelude: Très modéré, beginning softly with harp sounds. It builds up into surging drama. In common with many organ-based composers, Tournemire does tend to load the texture of the music with thick chords and a lot of doubling of lines, and one can certainly hear both organ-style voice-leading and the influence of Franck's D minor Symphony. But the orchestration is clear and accomplished, with some of the virtuosity of scoring that relates the sound to that of Richard Strauss. Tournemire adds to a standard large orchestra three off-stage brass: a high trumpet part and two additional horns.

The second movement, Très calme, begins with a sound that is refreshing after the first movement: a reduced, almost chamber-like string scoring of a polyphonic texture. It is here that one recalls Tournemire's frequent reminder that all his work is intended as a glorification of the Eternal. As in much of the rest of the symphony, the melodies are modal, stressing ancient mysteries of the island.

The final movement begins with a clear and noble brass Chorale, followed by a woodwind answer to it. This gives the ensuing Allegro a powerful spiritual quality.

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