Ave Maria pour chœur
Composer:
César Franck (1822-1890), 1845
César Auguste Jean Guillaume Hubert Franck
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AveWiki link |
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César A. |
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Franck |
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1845 |
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Ave Maria |
choir |
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César A. |
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Franck |
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1822 |
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FWV 57 |
Ave Maria |
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César A. |
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Franck |
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1822 |
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FWV 62 |
Ave Maria |
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organ |
| Recording: not available |
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| Attribution problem: |
This website lists only 3 Ave Maria settings
by César Franck.
http://www.uquebec.ca/musique/catal/franck/fraccatc.html
The other 2 settings have been positively identified by catalog number.
Since supposedly there are only 3 settings, the song presented on this
page is assumed to be be a solo voice arrangement of the 1845 "Ave Maria
for choir". |
| Lyrics: |
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A-ve Ma-ri-a! gra-ti-a ple-na,
A-ve Ma-ri-a! gra-ti-a ple-na, gra-ti-a ple-na,
Do-mi-nus te-cum, Do-mi-nus te-cum,
be-ne-di-cta tu in mu-li-e-ri-bus,
et be-ne-di-ctus fru-ctus ven-tris tu-i, Je-sus.
A-ve Ma-ri-a! A-ve Ma-ri-a! |
San-cta Ma-ri-a, Ma-ter De-i,
San-cta Ma-ri-a, San-cta Ma-ri-a, Ma-ter De-i,
o-ra pro no-bis, o-ra pro no-bis,
o-ra pro no-bis pec-ca-to-ri-bus,
nunc et in ho-ra mor-tis nos-trae,
San-cta Ma-ri-a, San-cta Ma-ri-a,
A-men. |
| Score: |
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play/stop MIDI:
My thanks and appreciation to
Jeanne Buyens (Brussels, Belgium)
for sending me this score. |
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| Internet references, biography
information. |
A biographical dictionary of musicians
(ed. Theodore Baker)
G. Schirmer, 1905 - Biography & Autobiography - 695 pages |
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Franck Cesar Auguste b Liege Dec 10 1822 d Paris
Nov S 1S90 Pupil of Liege Cons until 1837 then at the Paris Conserv of
Zimmerman pf Le borne cpt and B enoist org succeeding the las tn a mc d in
1872 as prof of org at the Cons and org at Sainte Clotilde In the Cons he
took 1st prize f pf 1838 and 2nd prize f comp 1839 Works
The 4 act comic opera Hulda (Monte Carlo 1894, succ.) unfinished 4 act
lyric drama Ghiselle Monte Carlo 1890 the oratorios Ruth et Boaz and Ia
Redemption 1 87 1 a symph poem w chorus Lis beatitudes his finest work a
symph poem Le chasseur maudit a symph pf pf and orch I es Djinns a symphony
in D min a sonata f pf and vln pf pes chamber music songs etc Biographical
Kuvre lyrique de CV by Destranges CF Etude sur sa vie son en seignement ses
euvres by Gustave Derepas Paris 1897 pp 60 |
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/César_Franck |
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck
(10 December 1822 – 8 November 1890) was a composer, pianist, organist, and
music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life.
He was born at Liège, in what is now Belgium (though at the time of his
birth it was under the Netherlands' control). In that city he gave his first
concerts in 1834. He studied privately in Paris from 1835, where his
teachers included Anton Reicha. After a brief return to Belgium, and a
disastrous reception to an early oratorio Ruth, he moved to Paris, where he
married and embarked on a career as teacher and organist. He gained a
reputation as a formidable improviser, and travelled widely in France to
demonstrate new instruments built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.
In 1858 he became organist at Sainte-Clotilde, a position he retained for
the rest of his life. He became professor at the Paris Conservatoire in
1872; he took French nationality, a requirement of the appointment. His
pupils included Vincent d'Indy, Ernest Chausson, Louis Vierne, Charles
Tournemire, Guillaume Lekeu, and Henri Duparc. After acquiring the
professorship Franck wrote several pieces that have entered the standard
classical repertoire, including symphonic, chamber, and keyboard works.
Child and student (1822–1842)
House Grady in Liège, where César Franck was bornFranck was born in Liège,
then part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (from 1830 part of
Walloon-speaking Belgium) to Nicolas-Joseph Franck, a bank clerk whose
family came from the German-Belgian border, and Marie-Catherine-Barbe Franck
(née Frings), who was from Germany. Although young César-Auguste, as he was
known in his early years, showed both drawing and musical skills,
Nicolas-Joseph envisioned him as a young prodigy pianist-composer, after the
manner of Franz Liszt or Sigismond Thalberg, who would bring fame and
fortune to his family.[1] His father entered Franck at the Royal
Conservatory of Liège, studying solfège, piano, organ, and harmony with
Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul and other faculty members. César-Auguste gave his
first concerts in 1834, one before Leopold I of the newly-formed Kingdom of
Belgium.[2]
In 1835, his father resolved that the time had come for wider audiences, and
brought César-Auguste and his younger brother Joseph to Paris, to study
privately: counterpoint with Anton Reicha and piano with Pierre Zimmermann.
Both men were also professors at the Paris Conservatoire. When Reicha died
some ten months later, Nicolas-Joseph sought to enter both boys into the
Conservatoire. However, the Conservatoire would not accept foreigners;
Nicolas-Joseph was obliged to seek French citizenship, which was granted in
1837.[3] In the interval, Nicolas-Joseph promoted concerts and recitals in
Paris featuring one or both boys playing popular music of the period, to
mostly good reviews.
Young Franck and his brother entered the Conservatoire in October, 1837,
César-Auguste continuing his piano studies under Zimmerman and beginning
composition with Aimé Leborn.[4] He took the first prize in piano at the end
of his first year (1838) and consistently maintained that level of
performance. His work in counterpoint was less spectacular, taking
successively third, second, and first prizes between 1838 and 1840. He added
organ studies with François Benoist, which included both performance and
improvisation, taking second prize in 1841, with the aim of competing for
the Prix de Rome in composition in the following year. However, for reasons
that are not explicit, he made a "voluntary" retirement from the
Conservatoire on 22 April 1842.[5]
His withdrawal may have been at his father's behest. While César-Auguste was
pursuing his academic studies, he was, at his father's demand, also teaching
privately and giving concerts. "It was a hard life for him, . . . and not
made easier by the ill-tempered and even vindictive behavior of his father .
. . ."[6] Concerts performed by young Franck (some with his brother on the
violin, some including Franck's own compositions) were at first received
well, but increasingly Nicolas-Joseph's commercial promotion of his sons
antagonized the Parisian musical journals and critics. César-Auguste's
technical abilities as a pianist were acknowledged; his abilities as a
composer were (probably justly at this point) felt to be wanting. The whole
situation was aggravated by what in the end became a feud between
Nicolas-Joseph and Henri Blanchard, the principal critic of the Revue et
Gazette musicale, who lost no opportunity to castigate the aggressive
pretensions of the father and to mock the "imperial" names of the elder son.
This animosity, "undoubtedly personal",[7] may well have caused
Nicolas-Joseph to decide that a return to Belgium was in order, and in 1842
"a peremptory order"[5] to young Franck compelled the latter to leave the
Conservatoire and accompany him.
[edit] Teacher and organist (1842–1858)The return to Belgium lasted less
than two years. Profitable concerts did not arise; the critics were
indifferent or scornful; patronage from the Belgian court was not
forthcoming (although the King later sent César-Auguste a gold medal)[8] and
there was no money to be made. As far as Nicolas-Joseph was concerned, the
excursion was a failure, and he brought his son back into a regime of
teaching and family concerts in Paris, which Laurence Davies characterizes
as rigorous and low-paying.[9] Yet there were long-term benefits for young
Franck. For it was from this period, extending back into his last
Conservatoire years and forward beyond his return to Paris, that his first
mature compositions emerged, a set of Trios (piano, violin, cello); these
are the first of what he regarded as his permanent work. Liszt saw them,
offered encouragement and constructive criticism, and performed them some
years later in Weimar.[10] In 1843, Franck began work on his first
non-chamber work, the oratorio Ruth. It was privately premiered in 1845
before Liszt, Meyerbeer, and other musical notables, who gave moderate
approval and constructive criticism.[11] However, a public performance in
early 1846 met with public indifference and critical snubs for the
oratorio's artlessness and simplicity.[12] The work was not performed again
until 1872, after considerable revision.
In reaction, César-Auguste essentially retired from public life to one of
obscurity as a teacher and accompanist, in which his father reluctantly
concurred. Young Franck had commissions both in Paris and in Orléans for
these activities, and for the composition of songs and small works. He had
offered some compositions to celebrate and strengthen the new Second
Republic of 1848; the public received some of them with interest, but as the
Republic gave way to the Second Empire under Louis-Napoléon, they dropped
out of use. In 1851 he attempted an opera, Le Valet de Ferme, with a
libretto of "abysmal literary quality"[13] and a hastily sketched score.
Franck himself was to say towards the end of his career that "it is not
worth printing."[14] All in all, however, this obscurity may have been
restful for him after his previous life in the spotlight: "Franck was still
very much in the dark as to what his vocation was."[15] However, two crucial
changes in these years were to shape the remainder of his life.
The first was an almost complete disruption of relations with his parents.
The proximate cause was his friendship and later love for one of his private
piano pupils, Eugénie-Félicité-Caroline Saillot (1824–1918), whose parents
were members of the Comédie-Française company under the stage name of
Desmousseaux. He had known her from his years at the Conservatoire, and for
young Franck Félicité Desmousseaux's family home had become something of a
refuge from his overbearing father. When in 1846 Nicolas-Joseph found a
composition dedicated to "Mlle. F. Desmousseaux, in pleasant memories" among
César-Auguste's papers, he tore it up in the latter's presence.
César-Auguste went directly to the Desmousseauxs', wrote out the piece from
memory, and presented it to Félicité with the dedicatory line. Relations
with his father worsened, his father forbidding any thought of betrothal and
marriage (which French law permitted a father to do for a son under age 25),
accusing him of distressing his mother (whose role is unclear: she was
either mildly supportive of her son or stayed completely out of the
conflict) and shouting at him about a then notorious husband-wife poisoning
case as the most likely outcome of any match by his son.[16] On a Sunday in
July, César-Auguste walked out of his parents' house for the last time with
nothing but what he could carry, and moved to the Desmousseauxs', where he
was welcomed. From that time on, young Franck termed himself and signed his
papers and works as César Franck or plain C. Franck. "It was his intention
to make a clean break with his father and to let it be known he had done so
. . . . He was determined to become a new person, as different as possible
from the other."[17]
Under Félicité's parents' friendly if vigilant eyes, he continued to court
her. As soon as he turned 25 in 1847, he informed his father of his
intention to marry the lady, and in fact did so on 22 February 1848, the
month of the Paris revolt. To get to the church, the party had to climb over
the barricades set up by the revolutionaries – with, d'Indy says, "the
willing help of the insurgents who were massed behind this improvised
fortification."[18] The elder Francks were sufficiently reconciled to the
marriage that they attended the ceremony and signed the register at what had
become César's parish church, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.
It was the second great change that made Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Franck's
parish church: his appointment there as assistant organist in 1847, the
first of a succession of increasingly more important and influential organ
posts. Although young Franck had never shone at the Conservatoire as
organist in the manner that he had as pianist, he had wanted an organist's
position, not least because it provided a steady income. He now had occasion
to match his Roman Catholic devotion with learning the skills needed for
accompanying public worship, as well as the occasional opportunity to fill
in for his superior, Alphonse Gilbat. In this position he won the favorable
attention of the church's Abbé Dancel, who in 1851 moved to the new church
of Saint-Jean-Saint-François-au-Marais as curé and two years later invited
Franck to assume the position of titulaire, or primary organist. Franck's
new church possessed a fine new organ (1846) by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who
had been making a name for himself as an artistically gifted and
mechanically innovative creator of magnificent new instruments. "My new
organ," Franck said, "it's like an orchestra!"[19] Franck's improvisatory
skills were now in much demand, since liturgical practice of the time
required the ability to take the plainsong music sung for the Mass or the
Office and to develop from it organ music fitting into the service between
texts sung or spoken by the choir or clergy. Furthermore, Franck's playing
ability and his love of the Cavaillé-Coll instruments led to his
collaboration with the builder to demonstrate the latter's instruments,
Franck travelling to towns throughout France to show off older instruments
or play inaugural concerts on new ones.
At the same time, a revolutionary change was occurring in the techniques of
French organ performance. The German organist Adolf Hesse (1809–1863), a
student of Bach's biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel,[20] had demonstrated in
1844 in Paris the pedal technique which (together with a German-style pedal
board) made the performance of Bach's works possible. This was totally
outside the scope of the kind of playing which Franck had learned from
Benoist at the Conservatoire; most French organs did not have the pedal
board notes required for such work, and even France's own great classical
organ tradition dating from the period of the Couperins was at that time
neglected in favour of the art of improvisation. Hesse's performances might
have been treated simply as a short sensation for their dazzling virtuosity,
but that Hesse's pupil Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens (1823–1881) came to Paris in
1852 and again in 1854. Lemmens was then professor of organ at the Royal
Conservatory of Brussels, and was not only a virtuoso performer of Bach but
a developer of organ teaching methods with which all organists could learn
to play with precision, clarity, and legato phrasing. Franck appeared on the
same inaugural concert program as Lemmens in 1854,[21] much admiring not
only the classic interpretation of Bach but also the rapidity and evenness
of Lemmens's pedal work. Vallas states that Franck, pianist before he was
organist, "never wholly acquired the legato style himself";[22] nevertheless
he realized the expansion of organ style made possible by the introduction
of such techniques and set about the task of mastering them.[23]
[edit] Titulaire of Sainte-Clotilde (1858–1872)
César Franck, organistIn this he was both challenged and stimulated by his
third and last change in organ posts. On 22 January 1858, he became organist
and maître de chapelle at the newly-consecrated Sainte-Clotilde (from 1896
the Basilique-Sainte-Clotilde), where he remained until his death. Eleven
months later, the parish installed a new three-manual Cavaillé-Coll
instrument,[24] whereupon he was made titulaire, Théodore Dubois taking over
as choirmaster and assistant organist. The impact of this organ on Franck's
performance and composition cannot be overestimated; together with his early
pianistic experience it shaped his music-making for the remainder of his
life. Norbert Dufourcq described this instrument as "unquestionably the
constructor's masterpiece up to this time".[25] Franck himself told the curé
of Sainte-Clotilde: "If you only knew how I love this instrument . . . it is
so supple beneath my fingers and so obedient to all my thoughts!".[26] To
prepare himself for this organ's capabilities (including its thirty-note
pedal), Franck purchased a practice pedalboard from Pleyel et Cie for home
practice to improve his pedal technique, as well as spending many hours at
the organ keyboard. The beauty of its sound and the mechanical facilities
provided by the instrument assisted his reputation as improviser and
composer, not only for organ music but in other genres as well. Pieces for
organ, for choir, and for harmonium began to circulate, among the most
notable of which is the Messe à 3 voix (1859). The quality of the movements
in this work, composed over a number of years, is uneven, but from it comes
one of Franck's most enduring compositions, the communion anthem "Panis
angelicus". More notable still is the set of Six Pièces for organ, written
1860–1862 (although not published until 1868). These compositions (dedicated
to fellow organists and pianists, to his old master Benoist, and to
Cavaillé-Coll) remain part of modern organ repertory and were, according to
Rollin Smith, the first major contribution to French organ literature in
over a century, and "the most important organ music written since
Mendelssohn's."[27] The group includes two of his best-known organ works,
the "Prélude, Fugue, et Variation", op. 18 and the "Grande Pièce Symphonique",
op. 17.
His increasing reputation as both performer and improviser continued to make
Franck much in demand for inaugural or dedicatory recitals of new or rebuilt
Cavaillé-Coll organs: Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély's new instrument at
Saint-Sulpice (1862) and later for organs at Notre-Dame, Saint-Étienne-du-Mont,
and La Trinité; for some of these instruments, Franck had acted (by himself
or with Camille Saint-Saëns) as consultant. At his own church, people began
to come to hear the improvisations for the Mass and the Office. In addition,
Franck began to give "organ-concerts" or recitals at Sainte-Clotilde of his
own works and those of other composers. Perhaps his most notable concert
arose from the attendance at a Sunday Mass in April 1866 of Franz Liszt, who
sat in the choir to listen to Franck's improvisations and afterward said
"How could I ever forget the man who wrote those trios?" To which Franck is
supposed to have murmured a little sadly, "I fancy I have done rather better
things since then.".[28] Liszt organized a concert at Sainte-Clotilde to
promote Franck's organ works later that month, which was well received by
its listeners and well reported in the musical journals. Despite his comment
about the trios, Franck was pleased to hear that not only Liszt but Hans von
Bülow was including them in concerts in Germany on a regular basis. Franck
reinforced his understanding of German organ music and how it should be
played by hearing Anton Bruckner at Notre-Dame in 1869. He began to have a
regular circle of pupils, who were there ostensibly for organ study but
showed increasing interest in Franck's compositional techniques.
Franck continued to write compositions for use by choir in this period; most
were never published. As was then common even for Conservatoire-trained
musicians, he had never become familiar with the polyphonic music of earlier
centuries. Franck composed his liturgical works in the then-current style,
which Davies characterizes as "secular music with a religious bias".[29]
Nevertheless, he was encouraged to begin work (1869) on a major choral work,
Les Béatitudes, which was to occupy him for more than ten years, the delay
partly due to the interruptions of the Franco-Prussian War. The War, as had
the 1848 Revolution, caused many of his pupils to disappear, either because
they left Paris or were killed or disabled in the fighting. Again he wrote
some patriotic pieces which, in the harshness of the times, were not then
performed. He and his family experienced economic hardships as his income
dropped and food and fuel became scarce. The Conservatoire was closed for
the academic year 1870–1871.[30] But a change was coming in how French
musicians regarded their own music; particularly after the war they were
looking for an Ars Gallica[31] that would be distinctly French. This term
became the motto of the newly-founded Société Nationale de Musique, of which
Franck became the oldest member; his music appeared on its first program in
November 1871.
[edit] "Père Franck", Conservatory professor, composer (1872–1890)Franck's
reputation was now widespread enough, through his fame as performer, his
membership in the Société, and his smaller but devoted group of students,
that when Benoist retired as professor of organ at the reopening of the
Paris Conservatoire in 1872, Franck was proposed as successor. There is some
uncertainty as to who made the nomination to the government; at different
times Saint-Saëns and Theodore Dubois claimed responsibility, as did
Cavaillé-Coll.[32] What is certain is that Franck's name was at the head of
the list of nominees—and that the nomination exposed the embarrassing fact
that Franck was not a French citizen, a requirement for the appointment. It
turned out that Franck did not know that when his father, Nicolas-Joseph,
became a naturalized French citizen to enter his sons into the Conservatoire
as students, they were counted as citizens only until age twenty-one, when
they were obliged to declare their allegiance to France as adults. Franck
had always regarded himself as French from the time of his father's
naturalization. In fact, he had unknowingly reverted to his birth
nationality of Belgian at his majority. Franck went through the
naturalization process at once; his original appointment on 1 February 1872
was regularized in 1873.
Many of his original circle of students had studied or were studying at the
Conservatoire. Among the most notable in later life were Vincent d'Indy,
Ernest Chausson, Louis Vierne, and Henri Duparc. This group became
increasingly tight-knit in their mutual esteem and affection between teacher
and pupils. d'Indy relates that independently but unanimously each new
student came to call their professor Père Franck, "Father Franck".[33] On
the other hand, Franck experienced some tensions in his faculty life: he
tended to teach composition as much as he did organ performance and
improvisation; he was considered unsystematic in his teaching techniques
("Franck never taught by means of hard and fast rules or dry, ready-made
theories"[34]), with an offhand attitude towards the official texts and
books approved by the Conservatoire; and his popularity among some students
provoked some jealousy among his fellow professors and some counter-claims
of bias on the part of those professors when judging Franck's pupils for the
various prizes,[35] including the Prix de Rome. Vallas says that Franck,
"with his simple and trusting nature was incapable of understanding . . .
how much back-chat of the nastier kind there could be even in a
Conservatoire whose atmosphere he himself always found kindly disposed
towards him."[36]
He was now in a position to spend time composing works for which ideas had
been germinating for years. He interrupted his work on Les Béatitudes to
produce (among many shorter works) the oratorio Rédemption (1871, revised
1874), the secular cantata Les Éolides (1876), the Trois Pièces for organ
(1878), and the piano Quintet (1879). Les Béatitudes itself finally saw its
first performance in 1879. As with many other premiers of Franck's larger
choral and orchestral works, it was not successful: the work was highly
sectionalized and lent itself to performance of excerpts rather than as a
whole. There was no orchestra available, and those sections that were
performed were accompanied by piano. Further, even d'Indy points out that
Franck seemed incapable of musically expressing an evil contrasting to the
virtues expressed in the Gospel beatitudes: "This personification of ideal
evil--if it is permissible to link these terms—was a conception so alien to
Franck's nature that he never succeeded in giving it adequate
expression."[37] The resulting "impression of monotony", as Vallas puts
it,[38] caused even Franck's devoted pupils to speculate on Les Béatitudes'
viability as a single unified work.
Franck was finding, in the 1880s, that he was caught between two stylistic
advocates: his wife Félicité, who did not care for changes in Franck's style
from that to which she had first become accustomed; and his pupils, who had
a perhaps surprising influence over their teacher as much as he over them.
Vincent d'Indy is quoted as saying "When [Franck] was hesitating over the
choice of this or that tonal relation or over the progress of any
development, he always liked to consult his pupils, to share with them his
doubts and to ask their opinions."[39] In turn, one of Franck's students
recounts that Mme Franck remarked (with some truth) that "It is you pupils
who have aroused all the hostility shown against him."[40] In addition,
there were some discords within the Société Nationale, where Saint-Saëns had
put himself increasingly at odds with Franck and his pupils.
How exactly all of this turmoil may have played out in the composer's mind
is uncertain. It is certain that a number of his more "advanced" works
appeared in this time period: the symphonic poems Le Chasseur maudit (1882)
and Les Djinns (1883–1884), the Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue for piano
(1884), the Symphonic Variations (1885), and the opera Hulda (1886). Many
met with indifferent success or none, at least on their first presentations
during Franck's lifetime; but the Quintet of 1879 (one of Saint-Saëns's
particular dislikes) had proven itself an attention-getting and
thought-provoking work (critics described it as having "disturbing vitality"
and an "almost theatrical grimness"[41]).
In 1886 Franck composed the Violin Sonata as a wedding gift for the Belgian
violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. This became a resounding success; Ysaÿe played it in
Brussels, in Paris, and took it on tour, often with his brother Théo Ysaÿe
at the piano. His last performance of the piece occurred in Paris during
1926, with the pianist on that occasion being Yves Nat.[42] Vallas, writing
in the mid-twentieth century, says that the Sonata had "become Franck's most
popular work, and, in France at least, the most generally accepted work in
the whole repertoire of chamber music."[43]
The continuing ambiguity of esteem in which Franck was held may be shown in
the award which Franck's circle had thought long delayed in its
presentation. On 4 August 1885, Franck was made a Chevalier of the French
Légion d'honneur. His supporters were indignant: d'Indy writes that "it
would be wrong to suppose that this honor was bestowed upon the musician,
the creator of the fine works which do honor to French art. Not in the
least!".[44] Instead the citation was simply as "professor of organ" having
completed more than ten years in that post. Vallas goes on to state: "Public
opinion made no similar mistake on this score" and quotes a journal usually
opposed to Franck as saying that the award was "above all things an act of
homage paid justly if a little tardily to the distinguished composer of
Rédemption and Les Béatitudes."[45]
The dissension between Franck's family and his circle of students reached a
new height when Franck published Psyché (written 1886–88), a symphonic poem
based on the Greek myth. The controversy (not confined to Franck's immediate
acquaintances) was not over the music, but over the philosophical and
religious implications of the text (based on a poetic sketch by a certain
Sicard and Louis de Fourcaud). Franck's wife and son found the work too
sensual, and wanted Franck to concentrate on music wider and more popular in
appeal "and altogether more commercial".[46] d'Indy, on the other hand,
speaks of its mystical significance, saying that it has "nothing of the
pagan spirit about it, . . . but, on the contrary, is imbued with Christian
grace and feeling . . . .[47] D'Indy's interpretation was subsequently
described as revealing "some embarrassment, such as a newly timid
Sunday-school teacher would feel if abruptly called on to acquaint riotous
adolescents with The Song of Solomon."[48]
Further controversy arose with the publication of Franck's only symphony,
that in D minor (1888). The work was badly received: the Conservatoire
orchestra opposed,[49] the audience "ice-cold", the critics bewildered (the
reactions ranged from "unreserved enthusiasm" to "systematic
disparagement"), and many of Franck's fellow composers completely out of
countenance towards a work "which by its general style and even certain
details" (for example, use of an English horn) "outraged the formalist rules
and habits of the stricter professionals and amateurs."[50] Franck himself,
on being asked whether the symphony had any basis in a poetic idea, told
Louis de Serres, a pupil, that "no, it is just music, nothing but pure
music.".[51] According to Vallas, much of its style and technique (both good
and not so good) can be attributed directly to the centrality of the organ
in Franck's thinking and artistic life, and Franck profited from the
experience. "He confided in his pupils that from thence on he would never
write like that again."[52]
In 1888, Franck tried his hand again at another opera, Ghiselle. It was more
sketched out than composed and Franck never completed it. In contrast, a
massive String Quartet was completed and performed in April 1890, and was
well received by public and critics. There had been other recent successes,
including his own performances as concert pianist in and around Paris, an
enthusiastic reception of a revival of Psyché of a couple of years earlier,
and performances of works by various of his pupils. In addition, he was
still playing Sunday improvisations to usually large congregations at
Sainte-Clotilde. He had in mind major works for organ and possibly a cello
sonata.
During July 1890 (not May 1890, as previously thought),[53] Franck was
riding in a cab which was struck by a horse-drawn trolley, injuring his head
and causing a short fainting spell. There seemed to be no immediate
after-effects; he completed his trip and he himself considered it of no
import. However, walking became painful and he found himself increasingly
obliged to absent himself first from concerts and rehearsals, and then to
give up his lessons at the Conservatoire. He took his vacation as soon as he
could in Nemours, where he hoped to work on the proposed organ pieces as
well as some commissioned works for harmonium. During the vacation he was
able to start on both projects.
While Franck could not complete the harmonium collection, the organ pieces
were finished in August and September 1890. They are the Trois Chorals,
which are among the greatest treasures of organ literature, and which form a
regular part of the repertory today. Of them, Vallas says: "Their beauty and
importance are such that they may be properly considered as a kind of
musical last will and testament."[54] A more recent biographer has written
in similar terms: "The sense of Franck bidding a protracted good-bye is
evident throughout ... It is hard, it is well-nigh impossible, to believe
that the Chorals' composer retained any illusions about his chances of full
physical mending."[55]
Franck started the new term at the Conservatoire in October, but caught a
cold mid-month. This turned into pleurisy complicated by pericarditis. After
that, his condition rapidly worsened and he died on 8 November. (A
pathologist writing in 1970 observed that, while Franck's death has
traditionally been linked to his street injury, and there may have been a
connection, the respiratory infection by itself could have led to a terminal
illness. Given the then lack of antibiotics, this "could not be considered
an unusual pattern for pneumonia in a man in his seventh decade."[56] But
this verdict has been subsequently queried: "no doubt about the 'proximate
cause' was ever voiced by the two persons most likely to know, namely,
Franck and his wife; nor was such a doubt ever voiced by those outside
Franck's immediate household who dealt with him between July and early
November 1890 ... Franck's punishing workload, 'burning the candle at both
ends' over decades, could well in itself have impaired the bodily resilience
he needed to fight off even a minor injury."[57])
The funeral mass for Franck was held at Sainte-Clotilde, attended by a large
congregation including Léo Delibes (officially representing the
Conservatoire), Camille Saint-Saëns, Eugène Gigout, Gabriel Fauré, Alexandre
Guilmant, Charles-Marie Widor (who succeeded Franck as professor of organ at
the Conservatoire), and Édouard Lalo.[58] Emmanuel Chabrier spoke at the
original gravesite at Montrouge.[59] Later, Franck's body was moved to its
current location at Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris, into a tomb designed by
his friend, architect Gaston Redon. A number of Franck's students, led by
Augusta Holmès, commissioned a bronze medallion from Auguste Rodin, a
three-quarter bust of Franck, which in 1893 was placed on the side of the
tomb.[60] In 1904, a monument to Franck by sculptor Alfred Lenoir, César
Franck at the Organ, was placed in the Square Samuel-Rousseau across the
street from Sainte-Clotilde.[61]
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