César Franck at the Organ
Brennecke, Ernest Jr.
CESAR FRANCK AT THE ORGAN By ERNEST BRENNECKE, JR. WHENEVER, after playing through a certain lovely but little-known collection of musical meditations by Cesar Franck, I reach the...
...There are flashes of shining arms and accoutrements in the opening measures of the set in D, and fiery drama galore in the Sorties in F and G. Try the Noels and Chants for the fresh spirit of the countryside, carpeted in green for wooden shoes...
...There is indeed a monotony which one might uncharitably call a "churchy" taint...
...Unhappily indeed...
...And what were the projects that claimed these most precious moments of the grave and shy old master's declining days...
...and above all, unreasonably...
...All these academic considerations, however, are as nothing compared with the deeply spiritual moods which these pieces draw out of the piano...
...For one thing, he toiled away there at the final registration of three elaborate, magnificent organ-chorals...
...The original plan of this collection, entitled The Organist,* called for eightyfour little pieces...
...For the practical purpose of the volume is quite patent...
...Here is food for reflection—and, ultimately, not unhappy reflection...
...This was, indeed, a worthy enterprise for the beloved, too-late-acclaimed leader of the youngest, most progressive musical spirits of the time—have they not all, from Satie to Debussy and Ravel, acknowledged their indebtedness to Franck's innovations...
...So, even when weakened by his final illness, he dragged himself up to the console at Sainte-Clothilde, in order to be able to leave behind him when he departed for good, something that was really fitting, imposing, finished, perfect...
...Here is a welcome antidote to the stiff Sonatinas of Clementi, and a variant to Schumann's overworked Scenes from Childhood...
...he was long-suffering and dumb under repeated disappointments, but there are outcries of chagrin and vengeance in the Choral in D-minor...
...Beneath the unimposing surface of such extremely simple compositions as these rests the surest test of the real quality of any artist...
...The composition of the Trois Chorals, written for the most complex and majestic of instruments and evoking all the resources of the medium and of its interpreter, was indeed a fitting labor for him, after *JJOrgantste, pieces pour orgue-harmonium, par Cesar Franck (oeuvre posthume...
...yet they display, in certain surprising measures, all those fiery depths in his personality which were perforce held in check by the requirements of his respectable routine of life as organist and professor...
...Why, yes...
...and the Communions for heart-probings...
...Schumann, his Kinderscenen...
...a bold and dashing Sortie...
...Even more is it true of music—here the greatest personalities have produced quantities of "children's music" which never palls—Bach, his little books for his sons and daughters and nephews and nieces...
...an Amen that compresses a world of strong emotion into four simple measures...
...The volume contains only fifty-nine...
...Twenty-five still undone when the inevitable hour struck...
...Franck intended to supply organists of moderate 155 powers with an eminently useful "auxilium musicale" —with a book of pieces arranged in groups or sets according to key or tonality, which might be employed at short notice in emergencies as they arose in the course of the ordinary Catholic services...
...For he not only created the first and only volume in a dignified harmonium-literature, but he also added a very notable one to the library of any pianist, amateur or professional, who is worth the name...
...here he compressed into the rigid structure of churchmusic forms the curiously woven fantasies of an artistic path-breaker...
...156...
...Unhappily interrupted here by the master's death...
...But even in those precious last moments of leisure, largely devoted to soaring aloft and giving free rein to the vast resources of the "grand-orgue" of SainteClothilde, Franck could not altogether silence the keynote of his life: to give his best powers ungrudgingly to those weaker spirits who had most need of them...
...He passes another ordeal, and I am certain, is at this moment conversing amiably with Palestrina and Johann Sebastian—if there is a Paradise especially for musicians...
...Third-rate artists produce none, and here is Cesar Franck with fifty-nine...
...One can see, also, that Franck did more than satisfy the simple and homely requirements of his task...
...days of patient instruction given cheerfully to scholars who cared little for the preciousness thereof...
...and of Shakespeare's songs, delightful to babes...
...a contemplative Communion that breathes luscious hothouse scents...
...Here he surcharged the antique ecclesiastical atmosphere with the romantic feeling that found little vent in his rather drab daily life...
...WHENEVER, after playing through a certain lovely but little-known collection of musical meditations by Cesar Franck, I reach the ultimate page, I am invariably granted a revelation—a glimpse of the inner being of a great artist and a great man...
...The chorals were for the few—but what of the many to whom their beauties must remain forever hidden...
...Here he had been accustomed, for years, to delight the worshippers with the free outpourings of his fancy and genius...
...Endless invention, eternal resourcefulness and everfresh variety...
...Thus, within a few octavo pages, one comes across a lovely, quiet Offertoire whose freshness is as naive and odorless as a daisy...
...And it is child's play, technically—only slightly more difficult to execute than a booklet of hymn-tunes...
...and the shuffling dispersal of the congregation during a Sortie...
...This he managed to do —just in time...
...and, let me hope, to that of every nerve-worn piano-pedagogue...
...Take the first set of seven, in C. We find a lovely Allegretto, then an equally charming Andantino, then a Poco Lento with heavenly echo-effects, then a thundering minor Maestoso, then a lyric by a saner Chopin, then a series of throbbing violoncello passages, and the Amen...
...finally the Offertoire—and what a key-shift in measures nine to twelve...
...What quivering, autumnnight landscapes can be found in the pages which follow...
...He set out to write, therefore, eighty-four compositions of the utmost simplicity, for that humble and generally despised instrument, the harmonium...
...It is true of poetry—think of Dante's sonnets, dear to youthful lovers...
...a piquant old Noel...
...but is there not a kind of monotony also...
...He never swore at his pupils, but there are exclamatory curses in the Choral in E; his walking pace was sedate, but there are headlong charges in the Choral in A-minor...
...My mind travels over to the church of SainteClothilde in Paris, and then back some thirty-six years, in order to conjure up an image of a gentleman with large, kindly hands and grey side-whiskers...
...Paris: Enoch et Cie...
...Yes, to be sure...
...Those compositions, faultlessly constructed, sing out all his lyrical mysticism with all his characteristic restraint...
...Here is endless invention, and—I use the word advisedly—genius...
...As the final cadence dies out of the piano, and while a joyous andantino-rhythm still rings in my ears, and as I move to close the book, my eye falls on a publisher's note at the bottom of the leaf: "Cet ouvrage a ete malhereusement interrompu ici par la morte du maitre, Novembre, 1890...
...This is true of painting —witness the sublime naivete of Giotto, the stern absence of complexity in Michelangelo...
...Into this gallery he retired, also, when the day's drudgery of teaching was over, when darkness invested the sound-sensitive, echoful spaces of the long deep nave—here he retired to work on, in solitude, at his own private projects...
...The slim volume of music which resulted, although labeled with ugly little circles, figures, and numbers, put there to guide the harmonium operator, nevertheless adapts itself beautifully to the half-percussive, half-singing qualities of our modern pianofortes...
...Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, their sonatinas...
...Composers of the second rank do less—Tschaikowski, Rubinstein, and Richard Strauss produced one first-quality child's piece each: the Chant sans Paroles, the Melody in F, and the Traumerei respectively...
...It is natural, then, that one should be able to detect an undertone of coin-clinking and of stealthily-moving vergers in an Offertoire...
...For it was at Sainte-Clothilde's organ, lodged in a high gallery, that the mild Cesar Franck was presiding and laboring in 1890, in the seventy-eighth and last year of his life...
...Uncharitably...
Vol. 5 • December 1926 • No. 6
