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This outstanding selection of César Franck's piano work...)
This outstanding selection of César Franck's piano works was assembled by one of the composer's students. The well-known composer and teacher Vincent d'Indy presents ten selections from throughout Franck's career. The pieces range from early experimental works to later masterpieces, including the memorable "Prelude, Choral and Fugue" and "Prelude, Aria and Finale."
César Franck (18221890) worked in relative obscurity until his appointment to the Paris Conservatoire, where he attained great influence as an instructor, organist, and composer. Vincent d'Indy (18511931) was a student of Franck's and a leading figure of Parisian musical society during the late 1800s. In addition to an introduction that offers insights into the composer's life and music, d'Indy presents thirty-two pages of commentary, written both in French and in English.
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Although Franck's output for the organ was small, it wa...)
Although Franck's output for the organ was small, it was influential; his work is considered to have laid the foundation of the French school of organ music. This volume includes all his best-known works for organ: the Six Pièces (Liszt ranked them with the masterpieces of Bach); the Trois Pièces, among them the well-known "Piece Héroique"; and the Trois Chorals, perhaps Franck's finest organ works.
This volume contains the following works:
Six Pièces: Fantaisie in C major; Grande Piece Symphonique; Prelude, Fugue et Variation; Pastrole; Priere; and Final.
Trois Pièces: Fantaisie in A major; Cantabile; and Piece Heroique.
Trois Chorals: No. 1 in E major; No. 2 in B minor; and No. 3 in A minor.
The music has been reproduced directly from the authoritative Durand edition in an oblong format for easy use at the keyboard. Organists and music lovers will welcome this inexpensive treasury of Franck's greatest organ music, assemble in one convenient, attractive volume designed for years of play and study.
Symphony in D Minor in Full Score (Dover Music Scores)
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Franck's only symphony was a late composition, first pe...)
Franck's only symphony was a late composition, first performed in Paris in February 1889, a year before his death. It splendidly reveals the great Belgian composer's musical individuality, and echoes powerfully the glories of the late French Romantic style.
Today, a century after its first presentation, the Symphony in D Minor is one of the most performed and recorded symphonic works in the repertoire. This authoritative Dover edition makes it available in full score in a sturdy, yet inexpensive format designed to bring you a lifetime of pleasurable study.
Although he was deeply influenced by Bach's contrapuntal technique and by Wagner's chromatic harmonies, Franck achieved a highly distinctive musical identity in his work. His pupil Dukas commented: "Franck's language is strictly individual, of an accent and quality hitherto unused, and recognizable among all other idioms."
He was influenced not only as a composer but as an organ virtuoso and a teacher, numbering among his students and followers d'Indy, Chausson, and a host of other important modern French composers. His greatest works, among them the Symphony in D Minor, combine depth and monumentality with a sweeping, almost mystical lyricism qualities that underlay his importance as a leading figure of 19th-century French musical life.
César Franck was a French composer of Belgian birth, whose famous Symphony in D minor and other compositions are distinguished by their chromaticism, frequent use of ninth chords, and expressive modulations.
Background
César Franck was born on 10 February in 1822 in Liege, Belgium.
Intended by his father to follow the career of a virtuoso concert pianist. While a student, he composed sets of variations for piano. Franck's early works included Grandes Sonates and a Premiere Symphonie àa Grand Orchestre which appears to have been played at Orleans in 1841.
In 1835 the entire family moved to Paris and Franck became a private pupil of Antonin Reicha until he became old enough to enter the Paris Conservatory in 1837. Reicha died shortly afterward, and Franck then studied composition with Leborne and piano with Pierre Zimmerman.
He suffered from a tyrannical father who saw no future in his son as a composer. Franck, therefore, continued to write showy trifles for piano and, having built up an extensive teaching connection, was able to maintain his whole family until in 1848 he married, and the family had to fend for itself.
Education
Franck studied at the Ecole Royale de Musique in Liège and at the Paris Conservatory. Intended by his father to follow the career of a virtuoso concert pianist, he won the first prize for piano at Liège in 1834 at the age of eleven.
While a student, he composed sets of variations for piano; their musical interest was nil but the opportunities they offered for display of virtuosity were manifold. In this, he merely followed the prevailing fashions.
Franck's early works included Grandes Sonates and a Première Symphonie à Grand Orchestre which appears to have been played at OrléansOrleans in 1841. In 1835 the entire family moved to Paris and Franck became a private pupil of Antonin Reicha until he became old enough to enter the Paris Conservatory in 1837.
Reicha died shortly afterwards, and Franck then studied composition with Leborne and piano with Pierre Zimmerman. His entry into the Conservatory was peculiar, for Cherubini had refused entry to Liszt in 1823 on the grounds that Liszt was a foreigner. Franck was not a French citizen at this time. At the end of his first year Franck was awarded a proxime accessit (second place) for fugue. He caused confusion at the organ examination by transposing the sight reading test down a third, without a falter. In 1838 he won the first prize for piano. He studied the organ with FrançoisFrancois Benoit and again caused consternation at the annual examination.
He noticed that the subject given him for fugal extemporization would combine with that given him for an improvisation in sonata form, and his invention proved too much for the examiners
Career
Franck composed his first serious works in 1842 and 1843; these consisted of Trois trios concertans for violin, cello, and piano, his official "Op. I. " They were published by subscription, the list being headed by Giacomo Meyerbeer, Daniel Auber, Gaetano Donizetti, Joseph Halévy and Frédéric Chopin.
Liszt, with whom Franck had struck up a friendship, was so impressed with the cohesion of the last movement of the third trio that he persuaded the composer to issue it as a separate and complete work.
In 1843 Franck wrote his first big work, an oratorio, Ruth, which considerably impressed Meyerbeer and Gasparo Spontini. At about the same time he was appointed organist at Notre Dame de Lorette. Franck, therefore, continued to write showy trifles for piano and, having built up an extensive teaching connection, was able to maintain his whole family until in 1848 he married, and the family had to fend for itself.
His first representative works were the organ work Six Pièces pour grande orgue written 1860-1862. By this time he had moved to Saint-Jean-Saint-François au Marais, and from there to Sainte-Clothilde where he remained for the rest of his life. Other works were a symphonic poem Ce qu'on extend sur la montagne, after Victor Hugo; an opéra comique, Le Valet de Ferme (1851 - 1852); and an oratorio La Tour de Babel (1865). All these remain in manuscript, but the first is undoubtedly the first symphonic poem ever to be written. Liszt subsequently wrote one on the same subject.
In 1869 Franck wrote what is considered by some to be his greatest work, an oratorio in eight parts for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra, Les Béatitudes (1869 - 1879).
In 1872 Franck received the greatest surprise of his life when he was appointed a professor of organ at the Paris Conservatory. Here began what has become recognized as a "Great Tradition, " for Franck gathered round him a crowd of pupils uninterested in the general trend towards superficial opera as encouraged by the director, Ambroise Thomas, and his organ classes became virtual composition classes, attended by his novel teaching of the principles of Bach and Beethoven. Thus arose the group known as the "Franckistes. "
The following year Franck became a naturalized Frenchman. Stimulated by the presence of so much youth teeming with creative activity, Franck's own individual aesthetics began to form and in 1879 he finished his great Piano Quintet (1878 - 1879). The next few years (1882 - 1886) were prolific and saw the composition of Franck's one sacrifice to romantic sensationalism, the symphonic poem Le Chasseur maudit (1882), a work written under the full influence of Hector Berlioz; Les Djinns (1884) for piano and orchestra; the Prélude, choral, et fugue (1884) for piano; the Variations symphoniques for piano (1885); the Violin Sonata in A major (1886; a wedding present for the great violinist Eugeen Ysäye); and the Prélude, aria, et finale (1886 - 1887) for piano.
The Symphony in D minor (1886 - 1888) was given its first performance in 1889 by the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire; it was received with contempt. This would have bowled over many other composers; but not Franck, who proceeded to the composition of a String Quartet in D major (1889), which, when played in 1890, was an overwhelming success and suggested that his music was at last coming into its own. However, after the composition of the magnificent Trois Chorals for organ (1890), three masterly and inspired examples of the variation manner,
Franck met with a street accident which led to his death on November 8, 1890, in Paris.
He lifted organ music from the slough of meretricious sensationalism to a level compatible in its way with anything written by Bach, and the same may be said of the piano--Franck's two great works may be placed alongside any of the Beethoven piano sonatas.
As a teacher he was an inspiration and many of his followers became distinguished--Vincent d'Indy, Ernest Chausson, Pierre de Bréville, Guy Ropartz, and Henri Duparc--while such widely divergent composers as Georges Bizet, Emmanuel Chabrier, and Paul Dukas hung upon his words. Debussy held his music and his personality in the highest regard. In particular, his free use of dominant ninths and of expressive modulation showed composers how to avoid the stultifying influence of the textbooks, and he established the cyclic principle. Some maintain that, being a Walloon, Franck was not a French composer, but since he was trained in Paris, lived there for the greater part of his life, and absorbed the first principles of French cultural thought, it is impossible to deny him his position.
From being nearly totally neglected during his lifetime, Franck has now become a classic and there is no question of his position among the world's great composers.
Quotations:
"I dared much, but the next time, you will see, I will dare even more. .. "
Personality
César Franck was isolated in many respects. He was a man of unquestioning faith, by no means a prig as has been so often suggested, but simply a "good" man. He was devoid of jealousy and was never heard to say a spiteful thing about those who were none too kind to him.
Connections
César Franck married to Félicité on 22 February 1848.