La bande à Franck: Chapter 6B

Gabriel Pierné, Part 2

Now to the chamber music! This stupendous body of work could be considered the summation Pierné's art, since he ties together the two 'sides' of his musical personality; on the one hand, we hear the lightness and humor exhibited in his teacher Massenet's oeuvre, and then there is the spiritually uplifting and somewhat Germanic side from his organ and composition teacher, Franck. This distinguished output has finally come into its own in the last 2 or 3 decades, with numerous fine recordings. I won't dwell on the minor works such as the Canzonetta for clarinet and piano, nor the Caprice for cello and piano, etc. Here are the works in chronological order:

1. Sonata for violin or flute and piano, in D Minor, op. 36 (1900)

2. Piano Quintet, op 41 (1917)

3. Piano Trio, op 45 (1922)

4. Sonata in F# Minor, for cello and piano, in one movement, op 46 (1919)

5. Sonata da camera, for flute, cello, and piano, op 48 (1926)

6. Variations libres et final, for flute, harp, and string trio, op 51 (1933)

7. Voyage au pays de tendre, for flute, harp, and string trio, (1935)

8. Introduction et variations sur une ronde populaire, for saxophone quartet, (1936)

9. Trois Pièces en trio, for violin, viola, and cello (1937)

The Violin /Flute Sonata is fairly solidly in the Franck tradition, and is reminiscent of Franck's own Violin Sonata from 1886, with its fervent, highly dramatic intensity. The piano writing is quite virtuosic — the violin part, too, has its technical challenges. This is surely one of the greatest 20th-century violin sonatas, even though it is just barely out of the 19th century, having been written in 1900. What is interesting to me is that Pierné wrote a middle movement in which the piano part, with its beautifully moving chromatic harmonic changes, serves as the basis for a songful, innocent-sounding movement that reminds me of one of those marvelous paintings by Monet, vivid on a beautiful spring day. Here is the essence of Pierné's utterly sensitive and bittersweet idiom. There is not a false note to be found here, so nearly perfect is his handling of form and timbre. The final movement is equally as turgid as the first, but more breathless. Here are Marianne Piketty, violin, and Laurent Cabasso, piano, in this lovely performance from 2013!

There is a genre of chamber music known as the piano quintet, and to my mind, there is a sub-genre I would call the "French Piano Quintet", primarily because seemingly everyone wrote at least one. No other nation's composers were nearly as obsessed with the possibilities inherent in music for piano and string quartet, which is large enough to be quite orchestral in timbre and coloristic capabilities. Of course, Robert Schumann wrote his masterful Quintet, op 44, in 1842, and it does appear that the very first quintet was composed by Louis Spohr in 1822. But the number of quintets by French composers is impressive; there are those by Alexis de Castillon, Camille Saint-Saens, two by Charles-Marie Widor, two by Gabriel Fauré, the Poème for quintet by Gabriel Dupont, Paul Le Flem, Jean Cras, Florent Schmitt (55 minutes long!), Paul de Wailly, Theo Ysaÿe (Eugene's brother), and of course Vincent d'Indy's op 81, which ought to be much better known, and perhaps the most profound of them all, the Quintet by that great organist and Franck disciple, Louis Vierne.

Pierné's Quintet is quite massive, lasting about 38 minutes, and was his most ambitious work to date in the field of chamber music — it remains, along with the equally formidable Piano Trio, op 45, a monument in 20th-century chamber music. Written in 1917 at the height of the Great War, the composer lavished all his powers not only of creativity but also of impressive technical skill; he bases the first movement on an ostinato in the piano, joined by the strings in a somewhat ghostly opening motive containing just two notes; it is a rhythmic motive-- a 16th note followed by a dotted 8th. Harmonically, we can really hear the constantly shifting chromatic harmony, as in Franck. Pierné was the great synthesist of French music! We can hear echoes of many of the composers with whom the composer was intimately acquainted. Indeed, there is the influence of both Debussy and Ravel, but as usual, Pierné builds upon these ideas in a highly dramatic fashion, utilizing the strings in such virtuosic writing that I would be quite hard-pressed to compare it to any other piano quintet of its time! Reger wrote his monumental Quintet, op 64, much earlier, in 1902; it is the only other Quintet I know of which is as orchestral in its compositional technique.

The 2nd movement is titled Sur un rythme de Zortzico. A Zortzico is a dance from the Basque region of Northeast Spain and also Southwestern France. Usually in 5/8 time, Pierné's handling of it is more creative than that-- he alternates 3/8 with 4/8 and again with 5/8 to give the movement a sense of fantasy.

In the 3rd movement , the composer's formal unity takes shape, beginning with another ostinato pattern in the piano, just as in the beginning of the first movement, but this time he uses the Zortzico rhythm, doubling it into a 10/8 measure whilst the strings are in a 2/2 time. But starting in the 13th measure, the strings are marked 6/4 whilst the piano remains in 10/8, thus giving this expansive feeling of freedom. 16 bars later, the original ostinato motive from the 1st movement makes another appearance, but now hidden within the fabric.

I can never get enough of this piece! So I urge everyone to take a listen to the recording I am posting below. This chapter now needs a third part, I've decided, because there is simply so much here to write about! Next time, we will reveal the rest of Pierné's fabulous body of work.

La Bande à Franck, Chapter 1

It's been a very long 18 months since my last post and I am inspired to begin my blog writing again because of a project I am just beginning, which will involve three recitals (at least), each of which will feature music by the many talented pupils of the great Belgian composer and organist, César Franck (1822-1890).

In this blog I will discuss the works involved as well as the composers, at least wherever there is any information on them. Sometimes so little is known about them that a paragraph or two is all there is. Most people know about the most celebrated amongst them, such as Ernest Chausson, Henri Duparc, and possibly Vincent d'Indy. Paul Dukas is occasionally included in this assembly but he didn't really attend Franck's classes in any serious manner.

Since Franck was the main organ professor at the Conservatoire, he was not supposed to teach any form of composition. But he taught the organ students harmony and counterpoint anyway. Some of these organ majors developed into major compositional talents, such as Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, and Gabriel Pierné.

Here, then, are most of his students in chronological order of their birth years.

1. First up is Viscount Alexis de Castillon (1838-1873). Hailing from an aristocratic family in Chartres, Castillon was compelled to attend a military academy because this was what male family members of the aristocracy were expected to do. No 'gentleman' would seriously consider shirking this patriotic duty. But young Castillon was unhappy in this line of work, so he sought out composition lessons from Franck. He destroyed what he had written up to that point, and started over with a new opus no. 1, the Piano Quintet. Castillon contracted Tuberculosis during the Franco-Prussian war and died, tragically, at the age of 34. He wrote no cello music to my knowledge.

2. Albert Cahen d'Anvers (1846-1903). Cahen is most famous for the portrait of him painted by Renoir in 1881.

Cahen was the scion of a wealthy Antwerp banking family. He was generally ignored by most of the other Franck students for several reasons: he was Jewish, he was Belgian, and he was wealthy. Because of his wealth, he was never required to work for a living. He wrote mainly operas, such as Jean le précurseur, 1874. He composed many songs and a few works for orchestra such as Endymion: Pöeme mythologique. I have just discovered in the French National Library a Grande Sonata pour violoncelle et piano still in manuscript form and I am eagerly awaiting its digital photocopy later this summer.

Henri Duparc (1848-1933), is a very famous composer but only for 17 "melodies" (art songs), one symphonic poem, Lenore, some piano music, and a Sonata for cello and piano written when he was just 19. Everything else he had written up to the turn of the century he destroyed. He became blind soon after that, but was unable or unwilling to learn to compose in Braille.

To be continued!

La Bande à Franck, Chapter 2

Born in 1847, Augusta Mary Ann Holmès was probably the only female pupil in composition among Franck's circle. Wikipedia claims that Melanie Bonis was also a student of Franck's, but this cannot be corroborated. Besides, none of the biographies of Franck nor even of d'Indy make a single mention of her name. Holmès was Irish, the accent grave having been officially added to her name upon her naturalization as a French citizen. She was accepted as a private student of Franck's in 1876. Women were still not admitted to the Paris Conservatoire as composition majors in this period. Most of the books on this subject were written from the 1940s until the early 1980s, which means that casual misogyny is rife in these pages on the subject; for example, her works were and still are considered mainly too 'masculine' in style. And she was a real independent spirit, determined to make her way in that hyper-masculine world. The result is an aggressive, even martial quality in her writing. Nothing pleased her more than to compose her Triumphal Ode for the 1889 Paris World's Fair utilizing a 1,200-voice choir. Among her works are numerous tone poems for orchestra, many of which are very stirring, such as Irlande and Roland furieux, symphonies including Lutèce (1877), four operas, and over 100 songs. By 1890, she had essentially given up on serious composition due to numerous setbacks. She became an alcoholic and died in 1903, aged only 56.

Holmès never married but lived with the novelist, poet, and essayist Catulle Mendès, with whom she produced 3 daughters.

The Daughters of Catulle Mendès (1888) by Renoir. Metropolitan Museum, New York

Scene from La Montagne Noire, 1895, at the Opéra de Paris

I feel strongly that, even though Augusta never achieved the kind of world fame she set out for herself, just to have written an opera which was accepted for performance by none other than that august and intimidating institution, the Opéra de Paris, would have provided anyone else with more than sufficient cause for immense pride!

Augusta Holmès

Henri Dallier (1849-1934), was a student in Franck's organ class at the Conservatoire. He won 1st prizes in both organ and fugue in 1878. In 1905 he succeeded Gabriel Fauré as organiste titulaire at the huge church of La Madeleine.

Vincent d'Indy (1851-1931) requires far less of an introduction than most of the other Franckists. Still, despite his international fame, most of the music by this prolific composer remains unknown to 21st-century audiences. A member of an old aristocratic family from the southeastern region of France known as the Ardèche, Vincent could have stylized himself as Count d'Indy, but chose not to elevate his stature in that manner. Young Vincent was raised by his grandmother in a strict atmosphere of rigorous studies in all subjects, from dawn until sunset, including music, which Countess Rezia considered essential to a well-rounded individual. He was also raised to be a devout Catholic, fervently patriotic, and a supporter of the armed forces. At the age of 19, Vincent enlisted to fight in the Franco-Prussian War. The following year, he began his studies at the Paris Conservatoire with César Franck against the turbulent and frightening Paris Commune, during which there was a great deal of violence and even assassination.

As an independently wealthy man, d'Indy never had to worry about making a living, yet he decided early on to become a professional musician. He even went so far as to join the Colonne Orchestra as a percussionist to gain valuable experience. At the same time, Vincent made the nearly obligatory pilgrimage to Bayreuth, where he attended the entire Ring of the Nibelungs in 1876, instantly becoming a convert to Wagner's world. At the same time, d'Indy was a classicist and always maintained that Beethoven was the ultimate inspiration. In d'Indy's mind, it was Beethoven and Wagner who together formed a synthesis culminating in the great art of Franck, whose own models were Bach and Beethoven.

Music in France during the 2nd Empire of Napoleon III (1851-1870) was largely devoid of the predominance of instrumental composition. Opera was by far the favored genre, so it was left to Saint-Saens and d'Indy, among many others, to inject the classicism which had been dominant in Austria and Germany since Haydn. D'Indy made it his life's mission to create the conditions in which instrumental composition was to find its inspiration. The lasting effect of all his efforts was the founding of the Schola Cantorum de Paris, established as a rival to the prestigious Paris Conservatoire, which remains strong to the present day. It had long been a dream of d'Indy's to educate more well-rounded musicians; at the Schola, that included a rigorous course in 16th-century counterpoint, something that was never taught at the Conservatoire, an unimaginable prospect to us in the present day.

Another enormous contribution to French musical art was d'Indy's 1,050-page Cours de Composition Musicale, published in 1912. This work attempted to combine virtually everything a musician should know to embark on a music career. D'Indy decided to assign three main epochs in Western music:

1 Rhythmo-monodic period, from the 3rd to the 13th century.

2. Polyphonic period, from the 11th to the 18th century. (1) It is difficult to assign precise dates, a beginning, and an end to each of these great periods, because they naturally overlap with each other in terms of the manifestations that define their character; the demarcations we give here are therefore only approximate, taking as a starting point the oldest musical texts that are sufficiently known and reliable.

3. Metrical Era:

FOREWORD from the 17th century to the present day. Thus, in this first book, the student will be called upon to study successively: Rhythm, the primitive and primordial element of all art, and its special application to Music (chap. 1); Melody, derived from language through accent (chap. 11) B Graphic signs representing rhythm and melody (chap. m) and Musical forms limited to these two elements (Rhythmo-monodic period, chaps. 4, 5). He will then study: the origin and theory of Harmony (chap. v1), serving as a basis of Tonality (chap. vII) and contributing with it to Expression (chap. vii); Then the History of this theory of Harmony (chap. 19) and its Application in melodies.

As can be seen, this is a most amazing work!

As stated, the young d'Indy attended the first complete Ring cycle at Bayreuth in 1876 and was utterly under its considerable spell for many years. Among the first works of the 1870s was the well-known triptych, Wallenstein, op. 12. He composed a great deal of chamber music throughout his life, and among the works in the 1870s are the Trio for Clarinet, Cello, and Piano, and an early Piano Quartet, op. 7.

Other large orchestral works are the Poème des montagnes, op 15, and what became his most celebrated piece, the Symphonie Cévenole, op. 25. This is unusual in that it is not really a symphony in the usual sense, but a form of piano concerto in which the piano is an obligato instrument within the fabric of the orchestra.

poster for Fervaal

The composer's first major work for the stage is the grand Wagnerian opera, Fervaal, op. 40, written between 1889 and 1893. The libretto is by d'Indy himself, and its world premiere was given at the Théatre de la Monnaie on March 12, 1897. It then moved to Paris's Opéra-Comique in 1898. D'Indy based his libretto on a Scandinavian drama by the Swedish playwright Esaias Tegnér. The opera is heavily influenced by Parsifal, and much of the dramatic action revolves around the theme of paganism vs. Christianity. This opera was influential in showing the French public what a profound movement Wagnerism was. He wrote 4 operas in all, one called L'etranger and his last opera, La Légende de Saint-Christophe.

As for d'Indy's music for cello and piano, there is the charming, neoclassical Sonata in D Major, op. 84 (1924-25). During the last twenty years of his life, d'Indy somewhat withdrew from public life after the death of his wife. This left him with ample time for reflection, and he turned towards neoclassicism rather than the massive forces of Wagnerism. Among these works is one so unusual that, to my knowledge, no one has ever written another one like it: The Triple Concerto, op. 89 from 1926, scored for Flute, Cello, Piano, and String Orchestra. On the surface, it sounds like pages from a Baroque Concerto Grosso, but the complex chromatic harmonies and difficult rhythms are big surprises. The Concerto is very successful, if a tad dry, but d'Indy was usually more concerned with form and counterpoint rather than overwhelming passion.

There is one additional work, the Lied, op 19, for Cello and Orchestra, and I may perform this on one of my "Franck" recitals if time leaves me with no choice. Next up, organist and composer Samuel Rousseau.

Like baseball cards, in the 19th century, people collected cigarette cards or those of chocolate