César Franck
(1822–1890)
Who Was
César Franck?
A Brief Introduction
By Jim Samson
César Franck was born in Liège in present-day Belgium but moved to Paris at an early age and later took French nationality. Along with Camille Saint-Saëns, he was a key figure in the resurgence of French instrumental music in the wake of France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian war (1870–1). In the 1870s he was a professor at the Paris Conservatoire and gathered around him a circle of like-minded composers, sometimes known as Franckistes, including Vincent d’Indy, Ernest Chausson, Louis Vierne, and Henri Duparc. (His relations with Saint-Saëns were more equivocal.) The Franck circle was both dependent upon and ambivalent towards the German symphonic tradition, exemplifying what philosopher Ernest Gellner called “hostile imitation” in his typology of nationalisms. Something of this uneasiness was inherited by a younger generation of French composers, including Claude Debussy. Famed in his lifetime as an exceptional organist-improviser, Franck is known today for a handful of major works that date almost entirely from his later years.
Early Years: Student—Teacher—Organist
At the age of eight, Franck (then known as César-Auguste) was enrolled at the Liège Conservatoire by his notoriously ambitious and controlling father. He transferred to the Paris Conservatoire in 1837. That he made only a little impression on the prestigious institution was a major disappointment to his father, and in 1842 he returned to Belgium in a vain attempt to build a concert career there as a pianist. Two years later he was back in Paris, and in 1846 he made a decisive break with his family, became César (rather than César-Auguste), and supported himself through private teaching and as a church organist, initially at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. In 1848 he married against his father’s wishes, though his parents did at least attend the ceremony. At this point none of Franck’s compositions had met with real success, but he was beginning to build an estimable reputation as an organist, and especially as an improviser, having been partly inspired by the eminent organist and teacher Jacques-Nicholas Lemmens (1823–81).
Middle Period: Presiding at Sainte-Clotilde
In 1858, in his late thirties, Franck was appointed maître de chapelle at the recently consecrated, neo-Gothic Sainte-Clotilde church (later basilica), where he remained until his death. The appointment was a major turning point in his fortunes. He became titular organist in 1859, just as the great Aristide Cavaillé-Coll organ was installed: an instrument “so supple beneath my fingers and so obedient to all my thoughts.” He instituted a series of organ concerts at Sainte-Clotilde, and his improvisations began to attract widespread attention, with Franz Liszt among his admirers. The organ, and the high-profile role associated with it, also nurtured Franck’s creativity, and several highly valued organ compositions appeared, among them the Grande pièce symphonique, Op. 17, and the Prélude, fugue et variations, Op. 18 (both 1860–62). Such works, along with the culture in which they were embedded, amounted to a rebirth of French organ music, and to the establishment of an organ-loft improvisation tradition that continues to this day. Franck also began work on his oratorio Les Béatitudes in the late 1860s, though its composition was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War; the complete oratorio was given its first public performance only after the composer’s death.
The organ, and the high-profile role associated with it, also nurtured Franck’s creativity, and several highly valued organ compositions appeared... Such works, along with the culture in which they were embedded, amounted to a rebirth of French organ music, and to the establishment of an organ-loft improvisation tradition that continues to this day.
Later Period: Père Franck
Franck is unusual in that most of his canonical compositions were written when he was already past the age of 50. The immediate trigger for this late flowering was his appointment as a professor at the Paris Conservatoire in 1872, but there was a wider context. In the aftermath of the war, the Societé Nationale de Musique, dedicated to fostering French music, was established, and its inaugural concert took place in November 1871. Franck was a member of the committee, and his early Piano Trio, Op. 1 No. 2 (1837), was given at that concert. Like other French composers of his generation, his orientation from this point onwards was towards symphonic and chamber composition rather than opera, which had formerly reigned supreme in Paris. The four symphonic poems, the great Symphony in D minor (1886–88), and the Variations symphoniques for Piano and Orchestra (1885) were all products of these conservatory years, as were his most important chamber works. A key inspiration was Liszt and the so-called “New German School,” as evidenced not only by a post-Wagnerian harmonic syntax, but also by the employment of what would later be labeled “cyclic form” as a means of unifying the separate movements of a work. These later years were characterized by an extraordinary surge of creative energy and intensity, which continued unabated until his death from pleurisy in November 1890.
Franck: Quintet in F minor for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello
Legacy
As an organist and improviser, and even more as a composer, Franck helped develop the “symphonic” organ style cultivated by French composers such as Charles-Marie Widor (1844–1937), Alexandre Guilmant (1837–1911) and Louis Vierne (1870–1937). This style, facilitated by Cavaillé-Coll instruments and catalyzed by a peculiarly French engagement with mystical Catholicism, is epitomized by Widor’s ten organ symphonies, which were composed between 1872 and 1900. Franck’s major symphonic and chamber works—much admired today—were not always well-received at the time, but as a corpus they remained center stage in Parisian musical life, and they were influential not only on composers from his immediate circle, but also on a later generation of composers, notably Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel. Despite their very different aesthetic orientation and their quest for a more self-consciously French voice, these three “modernists” adopted cyclic forms that were clearly indebted to Franck. It is enough to compare their string quartets (of which they wrote one apiece) with the one string quartet composed by Franck, in the last year of his life.
Franck’s major symphonic and chamber works—much admired today—were not always well-received at the time, but as a corpus they remained center stage in Parisian musical life, and they were influential not only on composers from his immediate circle, but also on a later generation of composers.
Watching and Listening
There is a good selection of chamber compositions by Franck in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Digital Archive, all dating from his later years. The Piano Quintet was composed in 1879 and was first heard at a Societé Nationale de Musique concert the following year, with its dedicatee, Saint-Saëns, playing the piano part. The hauntingly expressive chromaticism of this work often leaves us adrift tonally, as though (to mix metaphors) we are treading quicksand. One thing to listen for: there is an unmistakable pre-echo of the main theme of the Violin Sonata (1886) in the slow movement. Like the Quintet, the Prélude, choral et fugue for Piano (1884) unifies its three linked movements thematically, with the sobbing motif of the prelude sublimated in the fugue. (The chorale was not part of the original plan.) As the title suggests, the primary inspiration was Bach.
Franck’s Violin Sonata—probably his best-known composition—was composed in 1886 as a wedding present for Eugène Ysaÿe, who gave its first performance in December of that year. (Franck sanctioned the version for cello and piano made by Jules Delsart.) It is worth reflecting on the famous opening (the theme of which forms the core of the entire work), as it demonstrates how composition can be a socially mediated, collaborative act. Franck originally intended this as a slow movement, and it was Ysaÿe who persuaded him to change its tempo, and therefore its character. We also hear in the Digital Archive one of Franck’s last compositions, the String Quartet (1889–90): one of the longest quartets in the standard repertory and the culmination of his adventures in cyclic form. It was performed to great acclaim at a Societé concert in April 1890. Finally, one question of medium relevant to all these chamber works: just how far does the principle of thematic sharing, central to Viennese Classicism, come under strain given the long-breathed, expansive melodies so characteristic of late--romantic music?
