Music Director
Cesar Franck (1822-1890): Choral No. 3 in A Minor
Cesar Franck was a Belgian composer who was an organist, teacher, and composer in France. His music became a driving force in French music in the late nineteenth century.
Born in Liege, Cesar Franck was a gifted piano prodigy who did a concert tour of Belgium when he was only 11. Franck began at the Liege Conservatoire when he was just eight. From 1837 until 1842, he attended the Paris Conservatoire. He studied with Reicha, one of Berlioz's students, and became an accomplished organist and composer. He stayed in Paris and taught music privately.
In 1851, Franck became the organist at the Church of Saint-Jean-Saint-Francois, which had an organ built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, perhaps the most important organ designer in France at the end of the century. He became organist of the newly completed Church of Sainte Clotilde in 1858, and in December 1859, Franck inaugurated a new organ built by Cavaillé-Coll. Franck actually became an artistic representative for the builder.
At this point in his career, Franck composed music for church services. He attracted a great deal of attention, however, with the organ improvisations he played after the services. He finally used that kind of style in a composition with his Six Pieces pour Grande Orgue (1860-62), a work praised by Franck's friend Franz Liszt, who compared Franck's Six Pieces to Bach's keyboard masterpieces. He became an organ professor at the Paris Conservatoire in 1872. His students include the French composers Vincent D'lndy and Ernest Chausson.
Franck was similar to Brahms in that he sought to infuse Classic forms with stylistic elements of the Romantic era. Franck's use of modern cyclical forms, in which thematic material is modified and repeated throughout even multi-movement works, resembles the practice of Liszt and Brahms. Franck's Symphony in D minor (1886-88) is a symphonic repertoire standard, which became a model for other French composers. Some of Franck's harmonic innovations, as when he uses juxtaposed chords simply because of their harmonic color, look ahead to the work of Claude Debussy.
The Choral is part of a set of three pieces (Trois Chorals of 1890). The Choral No. 3 in A minor is reminiscent of a Bach toccata. The work consists of three large sections: The first section is further broken down into quick "toccata-like" sections and slow "choral" sections. The second section is characterized by a sumptuous lyrical melody which begins to build in volume and intensity. The third section combines the toccata-like material with the choral material.
Beth Bergman Fisher