3 by Peter Maxwell Davies was composed in 1984 on a commission from the BBC Philharmonic, who gave the world premiere on 19 February 1985, at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, with Edward Downes conducting.

[5] It begins in slow tempo in the tonality of D, quoting in the flutes a plainsong addressed to the Archangel Michael, "Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in praelio", and the movement becomes progressively faster until the opening material and tonality returns and "the music is blown right away, as if it were on scurrying air-currents".

The composer likens the second movement to the visual experience of contemplating a Brunelleschi church nave from a fixed central point.

First, the "windows" disrupt the musical continuity of the previous two movements, and thereby "reducing, but not totally avoiding, the likelihood of an archetypal formal design being used in the finale".

[12] All four movements, however, resist structural closure by denying the tonic's usual function of asserting its superiority at the end, and an important aspect of the formal unfolding of the entire work is the oscillation between sections having tonal focus on the one hand with others of a tonally ambiguous polyphony.