César Auguste Franck

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(b Liège, 10 Dec 1822; d Paris, 8 Nov 1890). French composer, teacher and organist of Belgian birth. Intended by his ambitious father for a career as a piano virtuoso, he studied at the Liège (1830-35) and Paris (1837-42) conservatories but found his true vocation only later through organist's appointments in Paris, chiefly that of Ste Clotilde (from 1858) and part-time teaching. His improvisatory skill attracted notice and led to his first major work, the remarkable Six pièces (1862), though another decade passed before he was appointed organ professor at the Conservatoire. From the mid-1870s until his death his creative powers lasted unabated. He wrote large-scale sacred works, notably the oratorio Les béatitudes (1879), and several symphonic poems such as Le chausseur maudit (1882) and Psyché (1888). But his achievements are evident especially in the symphonic, chamber and keyboard works in which he made one of the most distinguished contributions to the field by any French musician. Here, in the Piano Quintet (1879), the Prélude, choral et fugue for piano (1884), the Violin Sonata (1886), the Symphony in D minor (1888) and the String Quartet (1889), his inherent emotionalism and a preoccupation with counterpoint and traditional forms found a balance, in turn decisively impressing his band of disciples, from Duparc, d′Indy and Chausson to Lekeu, Vierne, Dukas and Guilmant. Features of his mature style, indebted alike to Beethoven, Liszt and Wagner, are his complex, mosaic-like phrase structures, variants of one or two motifs; his rich chromaticism, often put to structural use in the ‘chord pair’; and his fondness for cyclic, tripartite forms.

works:
Sacred music

• Ruth (1846)
• Rédemption (1874)
• Les béatitudes (1879)
• Rébecca (188l)
• 3 cantatas
• 2 masses
• c 25 sacred pieces, incl. Panis angelicus (1872)

Secular vocal music

• Hulda (1885, perf. 1894)
• Ghiselle, unfinished (1890, perf. 1896)
• patriotic odes and hymns
• songs

Orchestral music

• Sym., d (1888)
• Les Éolides, sym. poem(1876)
• Le chasseur maudit, sym. poem (1882)
• Les Djinns, sym. poem (1884)
• Psyché, sym. poem (1888)
• Sym. Variations, with pf (1885)

Chamber and keyboard music

• Str Qnt (1878)
• (Pf) Qnt (1879)
• Str Qt, D (1889)
• 5 pf trios (1834-42)
• Vn Sonata, A(1886)
• other vn pieces
• Six pièces, org (1862)
• over 100 org and harmonium pieces
• Prélude, choral et fugue, pf (1884)
• Prélude, aria et final, pf (1887)
• pf fantaisies

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The music of the French composer César Franck (1822-1890) is characterized by chromatic harmonies and skillful use of counterpoint. He frequently used a cyclic form, in which all the thematic material comes together in a climactic finale.

Born in Liège, Belgium, on Dec. 10, 1822, César Franck howed an unusual talent for music as a child. He began his studies at the Royal Conservatory, winning prizes for singing and piano playing. In 1835 his family moved to Paris. Franck attended the Paris Conservatory (1837-1842), where he won prizes for piano, counterpoint, fugue, and organ. He became known for the ease with which he improvised and performed difficult music at sight, transposing it to any key at will.

After a 2-year sojourn in Belgium, Franck settled permanently in Paris. He began composing and teaching. In 1858 he became organist at Ste-Clotilde, a post he held until his death. In 1872 he became professor of organ at the conservatory, where he attracted the devotion of some of the most promising students. Wielding a strong influence over younger composers like Vincent d'Indy, Ernest Chausson, and Henri Duparc, Franck seems to have turned his organ classes into composition courses and persuaded an entire generation of French composers to break away from opera (the only kind of music the French public seriously supported at this time) and to adopt a more serious attitude toward purely instrumental music. Franck died in Paris on Nov. 8, 1890.

Franck composed slowly and carefully, maturing through his lifetime. His total output is rather small, and his best works were written after his sixtieth birthday. The best-known of his choral compositions is The Beatitudes, completed in 1879, the same year he finished his Quintet for Piano and Strings, a characteristic work in the cyclic form. In 1884 he composed his most well-known piece for piano, the Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue, the title suggesting not only the religious tone that hovers over much of Franck's music but his own love of Johann Sebastian Bach.

The following year saw the appearance of Franck's Violin Sonata, with its effortlessly executed canon in the final movement, as well as the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra, a lyric quasi-concerto that treats piano and orchestra with equal consideration. The Symphony in D Minor, completed in 1888, follows the composer's preferred three-movement structure by combining the two traditional middle movements of the classical symphony, the andante and the scherzo, into a single movement. Again, all the principal themes return in the final movement.

Further Reading

Vincent d'Indy, César Franck (1906; trans. 1910), is a biography written by Franck's pupil. An excellent study of Franck and his artistic milieu is Laurence Davies, César Franck and His Circle (1970). Norman Demuth, César Franck (1949), discusses the music in detail.

Additional Sources

Davies, Laurence, César Franck and his circle, New York: DaCapo Press, 1977.

Franck, César (b Liège, 10 Dec. 1822, d Paris, 8 Nov. 1890). Belgian composer. He wrote no ballet scores but his concert music has often been used for dance, for example in Isadora Duncan's Redemption (Paris, 1915), Ashton's Symphonic Variations (London, 1946), and Babilée's Psyché (Paris, 1948).

Franck, César (1822-90). Composer, teacher, and organist of Belgian origin. He was a deeply religious man, and his combination of classicism and intense emotionalism inspired many young composers. Franck based some of his songs and symphonic poems on Romantic texts (e.g. by Leconte de Lisle and Hugo), and his music was greatly appreciated in many artistic and literary circles. The Belgian avant-garde movement ‘Les Vingt’ performed Franck's chamber music, including the première of his violin sonata, and on his death a memorial concert of his works. Proust was a great admirer of Franck's chamber music; his violin sonata is possibly one of the sources for the Vinteuil sonata in A la recherche du temps perdu.

[Kerry Murphy]

• Period: Post-Romantic (1870-1909)
• Country: Belgium/France
• Born: December 10, 1822 in Liège, Belgium
• Died: November 08, 1890 in Paris, France
• Genres: Chamber Music, Choral Music, Concerto, Keyboard Music, Miscellaneous Music, Opera, Orchestral Music, Symphony, Vocal Music

Biography

César Franck is an important composer from the latter half of the nineteenth century, particularly in the realms of symphonic, chamber, organ and piano music. His stage works were uniformly unsuccessful, though his choral compositions fared somewhat better. Born in Liège (in the French region which in 1830 became part of a new state, Belgium), on December 10, 1822, he led a group of young composers, among them d'Indy, Duparc, and Dukas, who found much to admire in his highly individual post-Romantic style, with its rich, innovative harmonies, sometimes terse melodies, and skilled contrapuntal writing. This group, sometimes known as "la bande à Franck," steered French composition toward symphonic and chamber music, finally breaking the stranglehold of the more conservative opera over French music.

Franck was a keyboard player of extraordinary ability who had a short stint as a touring piano virtuoso before moving to Paris and throwing himself into musical studies. In addition, he was an organist at several major churches during his career, and his skills on the organ accounted in great part for his compositional interest in that instrument; his organ compositions stand at the apex of the Romantic organ repertoire. Franck was a man of strong religious convictions throughout his life, which often motivated him to compose works based on biblical texts or on other church sources. For much of his life he was organist at the Paris churches of St.-Jean-St. François and then Ste.-Clothilde, and in 1872 he became a professor at the Paris Conservatoire.

Individual and instantly recognizable though his music was, it owes a debt to Liszt and Wagner, especially to the latter's Tristan und Isolde and several other late works. He tended to use rather quick modulations, another inheritance from Wagner, and shifting harmonies. There is a Germanic ponderousness in some of his compositions; consider, for example, the opening of the Symphony in D minor of 1888, probably Franck's most famous composition. In this work, one hears a mixture of paradoxical elements so typical of the composer: for example, moments of peace and serenity barely conceal an undercurrent of disquiet. In this symphony, Franck, adapts the Lisztian-Wagnerian predilection toward cyclical structure and melodic motto to an abstract symphonic form. Another characteristic of Franck's music is extended homophonic writing, as exemplified in his choral symphonic poem Psyché.

Franck died in Paris on November 8, 1890. By the turn of the century he had become the leading figure associated with the "Old School" in France, while Debussy came to represent the "progressive" forces. ~ AMG, All Music Guide