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MOS Composer of the Month: Previous Page, Next Page, Index |
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Composer of the Month - August, 2005
by Daryl Lee Like many of the composers in this series, Cèsar Franck was fortunate to have parents with both the will and the means to give him a solid education in music. He was born to a banking family in Liege, Belgium, who were intent on his becoming a virtuoso pianist. They started him in the Liege Royal Conservatory at age 8, and moved him to the Paris conservatory at age 15. His virtuosity was evident early on: he won a prize for transposing a fugue a third lower while sight-reading it. But French churches of the time needed organists more than they needed pianists, and it was as a church organist that Franck found his creative home. After serving in several churches for five years, he landed at Ste. Clothilde in 1858, and his career as an organist, teacher , and composer began to take shape. He developed his improvisation skills, which rapidly earned him recognition, and which led to his first significant composition in 1862, Six pieces. In 1872, his reputation had developed to the point where he was appointed professor of organ at the Paris Conservatoire, although he continued to hold the post of organist at Ste. Clothilde for the remainder of his life. His students at the conservatory included such French luminaries as Vincent d'Indy, Duparc, Chapuis, and Louis Vierne. The Michael O'Neal Summer Singers will be including Franck's setting of Psalm 150, frequently called The Musician's Psalm. Performed in concert with the church's excellent Schlicker organ, the setting illustrates Franck's skill in both the vocal and organ media. As a teacher, Franck had a reputation for gentleness. His students called him Pater Seraphicus, a sobriquet much earlier used to refer to Francis of Assisi. As a composer, Franck was in the wrong place at the wrong time. His father was Belgian with German roots, and Franck was in France composing in a style that was European at a time when the French critics and public were demanding something distinctively French. Consequently he never achieved the fame he has earned in the century or so since his death. Franck's life ended tragically after being struck by a horse-drawn bus in 1890. He never fully recovered from the accident, dying of pleurisy later that year. His artistic skills had not shown signs of diminishing before then, so there is no telling how much choral, symphonic, and organ literature the world could have had under other circumstances. For further reading on Cèsar Franck: Click here for more information about the MOS Composer of the Month feature. |
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