Between the Romantic-sounding works Einojuhani Rautavaara composed early in his career and the overtly melodic works that helped bring him a worldwide audience in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a brief period in which he explored the possibilities of twelve-tone composition. Rautavaara has referred to his Symphony No. 3, written over the years 1959-1960, as a synthesis of the Romanticism of his First Symphony and the more angular modernism of his Second. The Symphony No. 3 was given its first performance on April 10, 1962, in Helsinki, with Paavo Berglund conducting the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Rautavaara actually uses twelve-tone techniques in the Symphony No. 3, but they are seldom recognizable as such. Many commentators, in fact, have remarked on the Brucknerian quality of the work, responding not only to the composer's use of four Wagner tubas, but also to the long-limbed quality of the work's melodies and its many monumental, brass-drenched climaxes. An air of mystery, or expectation, marks the first and longest of the symphony's four movements, which opens with scalar patterns (somewhat resembling bird songs) in the woodwinds over quiet low string tremolos. More expansive themes in the strings dominate the middle of the movement. Then, after building to a noble, truly Bruckner-like climax, the scalar patterns return as a coda. The slow second movement is tense and dark, with fleeting consolation provided by some of the music for the horns and Wagner tubas. Lyrical ideas alternate with faster, more agitated material in the rustic scherzo third movement. In the finale, the lower strings set up a rhythm over which fanfare-like material from the brass gains momentum. There are some lighter moments, notably a curious bassoon theme that appears a couple of times. But for the most part the movement is forceful and serious-minded. A recollection of the tremolos and melodic fragments that opened the work provide its quiet ending.

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