Symphony in D minor (Franck)

The Symphony in D minor is the most famous orchestral work and the only symphony written by the 19th-century Belgian composer César Franck. After two years' of work, the symphony was completed 22 August 1888. It was premiered at the Paris Conservatory on 17 February 1889 under the direction of Jules Garcin. Franck dedicated it to his pupil Henri Duparc.

Orchestration

Orchestration: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, english horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, harp and strings.

History & controversy

César Franck's fame and reputation rest largely upon a small number of compositions, most of them composed toward the end of his life. Of these, the Symphony in D minor was one of his last works. It was first performed only a year before Franck died.

The fact that Franck finally chose to write a symphony is itself unusual, given the rarity of the form in 19th-century France, which considered the symphony a redoubt of German music. It is likely that the genesis of the Symphony in D minor followed upon the success of his influential "Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra" composed in 1885.

Additionally, the success of several works by other French composers had nudged the symphonic form back into favour with the French concert-going public. The Organ Symphony by Camille Saint-Saëns and (although a work for piano and orchestra) the Symphony on a French Mountain Song by Vincent d'Indy [ See Leon Vallas, "The Discovery of Musical Germany by Vincent d'Indy in 1873" The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 2 (April 1939), 176-194] , both written in 1886 and popularly received, had helped to revive the symphony as a concert piece, dormant since the appearance of Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique in 1830. (An earlier piece, the Symphonie Espagnole (1875) by Édouard Lalo is a violin concerto.) Both these works, however, sought to create compositional distance with the symphonic form and sound of the German romantic idiom (exemplified by Brahms and Richard Wagner) through several "French" innovations, including integrating piano (and in the case of Saint-Saëns, the organ) into the orchestra, and using a cyclic thematic style.

Like the earlier works of Saint-Saëns and Berlioz, as with his own compositions, Franck also made use of a cyclic structure in the composition of his symphony. Indeed, the Symphony in D remains the most outstanding example of cyclic symphonic writing in the Romantic tradition. However, Franck also used a typically "Germanic" sound, eschewing both the novelties of orchestration (with one notable exception) or nationalist thematic inspiration that Saint-Saëns and D'Indy had used to differentiate their own symphonic works. As a result, Franck's Symphony in D can be seen as the union of two largely distinct national forms: the French cyclic form with the German romantic symphonic form, with clear Wagnerian and Lisztian influences.

Due in part to this unexpected fusion, the piece was poorly received upon its first performance. More importantly, however, the reception of Franck's symphony was greatly affected by the politicised world of French music following the split in the Société Nationale de Musique, which had been founded by Saint-Saëns in 1871 in reaction to anti-German sentiment aroused by the Franco-Prussian War. [For a general background, see Michael Strasser, "The Société Nationale and Its Adversaries: The Musical Politics of L'Invasion germanique in the 1870s", 19th-Century Music, Spring 2001, Vol. 24, No. 3, 225-251.] The 1886 split was driven by the Société's decision to accept "foreign" (i.e. principally German) music and an admiration for the music of Richard Wagner by some of its younger members (notably Franck himself and D'Indy). This unacceptable betrayal of French music led several conservative members of the Société, led by Saint-Saëns, to resign; Franck himself thereon assumed the presidency. The resulting environment was poisonous. [Jacques Cheyronnaud, "« Eminemment français » Nationalisme et musique", Terrain ("En Europe, les nations"), 17, Oct 1991, s.l. Available online at: [http://terrain.revues.org/document3016.html] ] The controversy permeated the Conservatoire de Paris and made it very difficult for Franck to get his symphony premiered. His score rejected by the leading conductor Charles Lamoureux, Franck resorted to the conservatory orchestra which was obliged to play faculty works. Even then, rehearsals were desultory and reaction negative.

Sitting in on a rehearsal under the baton of Jules Garcin, where the players were resistant and uncooperative, Conservatoire director Ambroise Thomas is supposed to have remarked in reaction to the second movement (and quoted by Vincent d'Indy, in his biography of Franck) "name a single symphony by Haydn or Beethoven that uses the English horn!" (This may well be apocryphal and used by d'Indy - who was firmly in the Franck camp - to mock the conservative Thomas, since Haydn had very famously used English horns in his own Symphony No. 22, "The Philosopher".)

Politics continued to determine the popular reaction to the symphony's first performance. Critics saw the work as a clumsy attempt at orchestral writing that departed too stridently from the classical symphonic form and harmonic rules of Haydn and Beethoven. [See generally C. Goubault "La critique musicale dans la presse française de 1870 à 1984" (Slatkine, 1984)] Contemporaries, mostly allied with the conservative faction of the Société Nationale de Musique, were unsparing. The noted music critic, a close friend and voluminous correspondent of Camille Saint-Saëns, Camille Bellaigue (1858-1930) dismissed it is as "arid and drab music, without ... grace or charm," and derided the principal four-bar theme upon which the symphony expands throughout as "hardly above the level of those given to Conservatoire students." The review "Le Ménestrel" called it "morose.... [Franck] had very little to say here, but he proclaims it with the conviction of the pontiff defining dogma." And Charles Gounod, also making implicit reference to the idea of a dogmatic German style, wrote of it: "incompetence pushed to dogmatic lengths."

This acid political climate helps explain not only the ferocity of French nationalist reaction, but also the speed with which the symphony attained popularity where the internecine divisions of defining French music were not at issue. Thus, within several years of its composition, the symphony was regularly being programmed across Europe and in the US. It received its American premiere in Boston on January 16, 1899 under the baton of Wilhelm Gericke.

Form

In a departure from typical late-romantic symphonic structure, the Symphony in D minor is in three movements, each of which makes reference to the initial four-bar theme introduced at the beginning of the piece. The elision of the standard Scherzo movement is in part compensated for with a scherzo-like treatment in the second movement.

* I. "Lento"; "Allegro ma non troppo".:An expansion of a standard sonata-allegro form, the symphony begins with a harmonically lithe subject (below) that is spun through widely different keys throughout the movement.

:This simple theme forms the thematic basis for the cyclic treatment in the rest of the work.

* II. "Allegretto":Famous for the haunting melody played by the English horn above plucked harp and strings. The movement is punctuated by two trios and a lively section that is reminiscent of a scherzo.

* III. Finale: "Allegro non troppo":The movement begins with possibly the most joyful and upbeat melody Franck ever wrote and is written in a variant of Sonata form. The coda, which recapitulates the core thematic material of the symphony, is an exultant exclamation of the first theme, inverting its initial lugubrious appearance and bringing the symphony back to its beginnings.

Selected discography

The following recordings by Charles Dutoit and Sir John Barbirolli are recommended by David Dubal in his Essential Canon of Classical Music (North Point Press, New York, 2001) while the Pierre Monteux version is considered the "reference" recording by ClassicsToday [http://www.classicstoday.com/index.asp] :
*Charles Dutoit: Montréal Symphony Orchestra (Decca 4302782)
*John Barbirolli: Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (Supraphon 1106132)
*Pierre Monteux: Chicago Symphony Orchestra (RCA 09026619672)

See also

* List of compositions by César Franck
* Société Nationale de Musique
* Romantic music

Notes

External References

* César Franck "Symphony in D Minor in Full Score" (Dover Publications, 1987)
* Vincent d'Indy, "César Franck" (Dover Publications, 1965)
* Léon Vallas, "César Franck" (Oxford University Press, 1951)
* Brian Hart, "Vincent D’Indy and the Development of the French Symphony", Music and Letters 2006 87(2):237-261
* Richard Langham Smith & Caroline Potter, "French Music Since Berlioz" (Ashgate Publishing, 2006)

External links

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