Maestros and their motor cars (34): He also drove a train

David K. Nelson says:

Curiously enough, later in life Honegger attempted to walk back the notion he had earlier given that he was portraying the start, acceleration, and arrival of a large fast steam locomotive. In his “I am a Composer” (1951, translated and published in English in 1966) he says that he was merely on the trail of a very abstract idea — giving the impression of a mathematical acceleration of rhythm, while the movement itself slowed. (A steam locomotive is the perfect expression of this as it works far less hard at speed.)

Honegger said “I was making an experiment.” He went on to joke that it would be inhumane to disabuse those who want to hear it as the portrayal of a locomotive (and grimly recounted a critic who assumed from the title that it was a portrayal of the Pacific Ocean and claimed that it evoked the smell of the sea!)

He further noted that Pacific 2-3-1 and its counterpart, “Rugby” were both popular examples of his trio of Symphonic Movements, but for Symphonic Movement No 3 he could think of no programmatic title and as a consequence, it hardly ever gets played. “My poor Symphonic Movement No. 3 paid dearly for its barren title ….”