Symphony No. 3 (Rouse)

Symphony No. 3 is an orchestral composition in two movements by the American composer Christopher Rouse. The work was jointly commissioned by the St. Louis Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the , and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. It was completed February 3, 2011 and premiered May 5, 2011 by the Saint Louis Symphony under David Robertson at Powell Hall in St. Louis, Missouri. The piece is dedicated to Rouse's high school music teacher, John Merrill.

Rouse conceived the Symphony No. 3 as a reworking of Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 2 in D minor (itself a homage to Beethoven's final Piano Sonata), though there are relatively few musical quotes from the work. Instead, as Rouse wrote in the program notes, he used the "unusual form of Prokofiev's Symphony No. 2" to "[furnish] the old bottle into which I have tried to pour new wine." The symphony has a duration of approximately 25 minutes and is composed in two movements; the first is a "savage and aggressive" homage to the symphony of "iron and steel" and the second is a theme with five variations.

The symphony is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four French horns, four trumpets, four trombones, tuba, two harps, timpani, percussion (three players), and strings (violins I & II, violas, violoncellos, and double basses).

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