![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “Franck was fifty-five before he began the works that are considered to be masterpieces: the Piano Quintet, the Symphonic Variations, the Violin Sonata, the Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue, the String Quartet, and the Symphony in D minor.” He wrote in several genres, including a symphony and an opera, other orchestral (6), concertos (3), choral (12), chamber music (14), works for voice (25), and piano and organ music (39). 3) There is another composer I would never have associated with Franck, on whom Franck’s influence turns out to have been profound: Charles Ives. 2) Though no compositional school grew out of Franck’s music, he influenced “an entire generation of French composers, including Vincent d’Indy and Ernest Chausson, who were nearly idolatrous in their devotion.” (n. to define a contemporary concert musical culture that was distinctly French and independent of German influence.” Leon Botstein points to Franck as “The founding figure in that development during the second half of the nineteenth century,” who “inspired through his music a French penchant for cyclical structure and an intense interest in color and the spatial atmosphere of sound.” (n. there was an understandable and intense search among French musicians and intellectuals. With “the deadly political rivalry and conflict between France and Germany that came to a head in 1870 with the Franco-Prussian War. Franck was also “inspired by the music of Liszt and Wagner, masters of thematic transformation, novel orchestral effects, and bold new forms.” was haunted by the lofty spirit of Beethoven’s Ninth but it also mined Beethoven’s last quartet for an emblematic motive that audibly haunted the work and carried its spiritual message from first movement to last.”. While the potted online histories don’t reveal a connection to Beethoven, Richard Taruskin notes that Franck’s Symphony in D minor, “Like all nineteenth century symphonies in D minor. Finally, in 1872, he attained “the post of organ professorship at the Conservatoire.” Richard Taruskin wrote of Franck that, just as Olivier Messiaen “was without question the most important organist-composer of the twentieth century,” so Franck “had been in the nineteenth.” In addition, “both Messiaen and Franck were famous and much-sought-after teachers of composition, whose pupils and disciples formed an elite group of modernists who universalized their master’s teaching and made it an important ‘mainstream’ influence.” (n.1) He settled in Paris in 1846, where he earned a living as a teacher and organist. While Franck was a fine organist, he didn’t have the social acumen for a concert career. Beginning in 1840, Franck studied organ with François Benoist. Their time together was brief, however, as Reicha died in 1836. An early teacher was Antonín Reicha, in whom Franck had “the father figure he never saw” in his own father. Byron Adams wrote that the “equally timid” Franck was the model for “the timid composer whose heart was broken by his mannish daughter’s lesbianism.” I knew little about Franck, so this assignment seemed a good opportunity to learn more.įranck (1822-1890) was born in Liège, in what is now Belgium. My introduction to César Franck’s music came in the guise of a creature of fiction, the composer Vinteuil in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. (Also, just a note to say, computer malfunctions and class work have put me behind in visiting I’m hoping to catch up a bit in the next few days.) (Hint to readers: the footnotes likely contain the best bits.) Most of all, I knew readers would enjoy learning that Franck’s works were catalogued and by whom and look forward to an opportunity to check my counts of Franck’s compositions by genre. The assignment requirements were detailed and specific, but nonetheless yielded some “fun facts” about Franck. This essay was submitted to fulfill a class assignment. I, too, have written some beautiful things. ![]()
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