This is a lush, romantic work, by one of the last carriers of the tradition of that generation of French composers who were deeply influenced by Richard Wagner.

Charles Tournemire (1870 - 1939) was born in the same year as Florent Schmitt, one year after Albert Roussel, and five years before Maurice Ravel. Nevertheless Tournemire followed the tradition of the French organist-composers, of which he was one (organist at the Cavaillé-Coll organ of the basilica of Sainte-Clotilde from 1898 to 1939).

He was drawn to mystical subjects, and once said that his music concerned itself with the "glorification of the Eternal." It also drew heavily for its inspiration from nature, particularly the landscape of the Brittany (Bretagne) peninsula, the very northwestern corner of France, and the Isle of Ouessant located a few miles off its point in one of the fastest currents of the Gulf Stream.

His large Second Symphony had been an overt description of that island, while the Third was also an ambitious work, concerned with the replacement of the old pagan gods of Russia by the advent of Christianity.

This symphony, by contrast, is a shorter work. It is a fine solution to the problem of the single-movement symphonic form, an idea that goes back to Robert Schumann and which was much taken up in the twentieth century. It makes a longish single symphonic movement but a shortish symphony at 24 movements. Indeed, due to its relative brevity Tournemire considered naming it sinfonietta rather than numbering it as one of his orchestral symphonies. It is in a subtle form that uses as its example the structure of the first movement of César Franck'Symphony in D minor. As to its extra-musical content, Tournemire simply said that it "exalts the poetry of Bretagne."

The symphony falls into five broad sections. The first combines the functions of a slow introduction, Assez lent, but also serves the structural purpose of introducing the main subjects of the symphony. The first appears on a viola, then a cello, and the second subject on a cor anglais (English horn). A faster section, marked avec du mouvement (with motion—the equivalent of con moto) begins development of the first theme, distilling it into a main motive that dominates the symphony.

The assez lent and avec du mouvement sections alternate with each other three times, all the time developing the first movement, but finally slows dramatically for the central section, Modéré. Here there is a surprising introduction of an organ into the scoring, for soft, ethereal effect. This does not make the work into an "organ symphony"; this is merely a quietly dramatic local effect. Nevertheless, at the work's premiere on March 12, 1916, in Paris the great organist Eugène Gigout played this part. This slow center of the symphony concerns itself with the second subject.

There is a surprisingly vigorous fast section, almost a cross between a scherzo and a march tempo, and the slow conclusion, repeating the sound-world of the opening, is quietly and radiantly joyful.

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