Simon Tedeschi (born 1 May 1981) is a Boston-based classical pianist from Australia.

Life and career[link]

Simon Tedeschi was born in Sydney to Mark Tedeschi QC, the New South Wales Crown Prosecutor and a prominent photographer^[1] and Vivienne Tedeschi, who is the daughter of a Polish Holocaust survivor, Lucy Gershwin, believed to be distantly related to George Gershwin.^[2][3]

His headmaster at St Andrew's Cathedral School in Sydney dissuaded him from taking part in sports such as cricket, for fear of damaging his hands, and he was given a room to pursue his piano playing instead.^[4] He studied piano with Neta Maughan from 1990 to 2000. In 2002, he moved to London to study with Noretta Conci.

He first performed a Mozart piano concerto at age 9 in the Sydney Opera House and since then has played as a soloist with the Queensland, Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Fort Worth Chamber Orchestra, Texas. He has toured Taiwan, New Caledonia, Italy and Malta as soloist with the SBS Radio and Television Youth Orchestra.

For three weeks in 1996, Tedeschi attended the Van Cliburn Institute in Texas, which accepted only 20 pianists worldwide. He was one of only three chosen to perform a Mozart concerto with the Fort Worth Orchestra.

Performances[link]

Charitable performances have a prominent part in Tedeschi's performing schedule; in 2005 he gave performances for the Karuna Foundation in support of Cambodian orphans, the Mater Hospital and a gala concert in the Sydney Opera House for the Wayside Chapel. Tedeschi is the Roving Ambassador for The Australian Children's Music Foundation.

• 2000
  • Grieg's Piano Concerto with the QSO
  • recitals for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO),
  • a Scriabin program for the Adelaide Festival
  • an extensive recital tour for Musica Viva Australia
  • guest appearances with the harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler on his Australian tour
  • performed for the Dalai Lama at his fund-raising concert in London
  • Edinburgh Festival and St John's, Smith Square – performances which moved Larry Adler to comment that "...he is one of the finest Gershwin exponents I have seen...reminds me of the young Rachmaninoff...".

• 2001
  • Sydney Symphony and Sydney Youth Orchestra
  • toured extensively for Musica Viva Australia with guitarist Slava Grigoryan

• 2002
  • recitals and concertos in New York, Philadelphia, London, Edinburgh, Wales and a 5-concert tour of Mexico as part of the Cervantino Festival.

• 2003
  • Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue at the Premier of New South Wales's Australia Day Concert at Darling Harbour, Sydney
  • a recital with Slava Grigoryan.

• 2004
  • toured for Musica Viva, and travelled to Japan for performances with Leigh Warren & Dancers.

• 2005
  • Italy
  • the opening recital for the Australian Pavilion at the Expo 2005 in Nagoya, Japan and later invited back to perform in Expo Hall for International Marine Day
  • a performance at the invitation of the Governor of New South Wales for the Crown Prince and Princess of Denmark
  • November 2005, soloist with the Cyprus State Orchestra for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2005 (CHOGM) in Malta
  • recitals all over Australia, including performances with award-winning jazz pianist Kevin Hunt and touring with renowned Brazilian flautist Tadeu Coelho and cellist Trish O'Brien.

• 2006
  • New York, North Carolina, San Francisco (with Roger Woodward) Philadelphia and New Mexico
  • 2006 International Ginastera Festival with a recital in St Johns, Piccadilly, London.
  • tours with jazz pianist Kevin Hunt.

• Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra (QSO)
• Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 27, K. 595 with the Sydney Symphony.

Awards and recognition[link]

Tedeschi has won numerous prizes and piano scholarships. In 1994, he entered his first International Piano competition in Italy. There he was voted the Most Outstanding Performer in all Youth Sections as well as winning the Open Age Concerto Section, two Piano sections and his age section. As a result of this competition, he toured the United States in 1995, performing in New York, North Carolina and Texas. That same year, he had a private audience with Luciano Pavarotti and performed for him.

In 1998, Tedeschi was named the Symphony Australia Young Performer of the Year, performing Alberto Ginastera's Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Jun Maerkl at the Melbourne Concert Hall. He was the recipient of a Queen's Trust Overseas Study Award of $10,000, also presented at the Young Performers Awards in Melbourne.

In 2001 he was awarded the Centenary of Federation Medal by the Governor-General of Australia.

In February 2002 Tedeschi won the keyboard section of the Royal Overseas League Music Competition in London, which is open to Commonwealth musicians under the age of 28.

Media appearances[link]

Simon Tedeschi performed the hand double for actor Alex Rafalowicz (David Helfgott as a child) in the 1996 Australian film, Shine.

He was the subject of an ABC TV documentary, "Australian Story", screened nationally on 5 August 1999.

He and his Polish-born grandmother, who died during the filming, were featured in an SBS TV documentary "The Two of Us" on 23 August 2006.^[5]

Tedeschi has been in a number of episodes of the ABC TV music quiz show, "Spicks and Specks".

Recordings[link]

Tedeschi signed a recording deal with Sony Music Entertainment Australia under the Sony Classical label. His debut CD was released in May 2000. He was subsequently nominated for an MO Award as Classical Performer of the Year and for an ARIA award – Classical Record of the Year.

In 2003 he recorded Leroy Anderson's Piano Concerto with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Simon has recorded Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concerto and Grieg's Piano Concerto with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Richard Bonynge, which was released in September 2005. Richard Bonynge commented: "an extraordinary young pianist...I felt a true musical togetherness with Simon – his sensitivity, his passion and his superb technique."

References[link]

External links[link]

• Simon Tedeschi's Official Site
• Simon Tedeschi (www.pianosociety.com; retrieved 3 February 2010)
• Simon Tedeschi – Dame Joan Sutherland Fund Recipient 2008 (54kb pdf; retrieved 3 February 2010)

Richard Fidler
Richard Fidler (right, holding guitar), performing with Tim Ferguson and Paul McDermott as the Doug Anthony All Stars.
Born	(1964-11-13) 13 November 1964 (age 47)
Medium	Stand-up, television, radio, books
Nationality	Australian
Years active	1985—present
Genres	Musical comedy
Notable works and roles	Doug Anthony All Stars

Richard Fidler (born 13 November 1964) is a well-known Australian Republican and Australian ABC TV and radio presenter. He first came to prominence in the 1980s as a member of the Doug Anthony All Stars (DAAS), an Australian musical comedy group also comprising Tim Ferguson and Paul McDermott. The group split up in 1994.

Richard has since presented various TV shows, including Race Around the World, Aftershock, Mouthing Off and Vulture. In 2005, he fronted the 7-10pm shift on ABC Local Radio station 612 ABC Brisbane.

In 2006, Fidler took on the newly configured 11am–3pm shift on 612 ABC Brisbane. The first hour, an interview segment known as "Conversations", is also heard on 702 ABC Sydney and across ABC Local Radio in both New South Wales and Queensland. 12–1pm, Richard takes a backseat to "The World Today", current affairs from Sydney. 1–3pm Richard is heard on 612 ABC Brisbane only.

Richard was elected to the National Committee of the Australian Republican Movement in 2001 and was the chair of their Constitutional Issues Committee. He resigned from these positions in 2007 although continues to be an active supporter of republicanism.

Fidler lives in Brisbane. He is married to Khym Lam and they have two children.

External links[link]

• – Conversations website
• Televised Revolution interview – Three part interview
• MOSH – Australian Comedy Forum (fansite)

This biographical January 2012 needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (December 2011)

Jane Rutter is an Australian musician - a classical flautist who also crosses into jazz and pop. She has performed in the UK, Europe, US, South-East Asia, the South Pacific, South America and China. She studied with Alain Marion and Jean-Pierre Rampal in Paris, after which she returned to Australia to lecture in flute and chamber music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

She has performed many times at the Sydney Opera House, toured extensively, widely performed her one woman show Tutti Flutti, played at the 1999 National Flute Convention in Atlanta, US, and in 2000 was international guest artist at the International Flute Festival, Brazil. In 2005 she was the patron of the Australian International Flute Convention.

Rutter has also presented on Channel Nine’s Getaway, winning a "Peoples' Choice" award, and has also composed several pieces. She collaborated with Oscar nominee David Hirschfelder. She played the role of Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Karnak Playhouse.

Rutter appears as guest soloist with many prominent artists across different styles, including Richard Bonynge, Christopher Hogwood, Michael Crawford, The Manhattan Transfer, David Helfgott, Peter Cousens, Tina Arena, Rick Price, Slava Grigoryan and Simon Tedeschi. She has performed with many Australian symphony orchestras, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and the City of Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra.

Recordings[link]

Rutter has released 11 solo CDs, including several with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Classics label.

These include:

• Embraceable You - Jane Rutter plays the Gershwin Songbook (2007)
• The very best of Jane Rutter (2005) - video
• Fire and Water: an Irish Fantasy (2004) - video
• Brazil (2004) with Slava Grigoryan (Guitar) that was nominated for a 2004 Aria Award for Best World Music Album
• Verse 1 (2002)
• Romancing The Flute (1998)
• Blo (1996)
• Apasionada (1992)
• Jane Rutter plays Mozart (1991)
• Mozart's Flute (1990)
• Nocturnes And Preludes For Flute (1989)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Web Site

César Franck, photographed by Pierre Petit

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.

Biography[link]

Child and student (1822–1842)[link]

House Grady in Liège, where César Franck was born

Franck 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.

Teacher and organist (1842–1858)[link]

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 favor 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, organist

In this he was both challenged and stimulated by his third and last change in organ posts. On 22 January 1858, he became organist and maitre 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.

"Père Franck", Conservatory professor, composer (1872–1890)[link]

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 Variations Symphonique (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 in November 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), 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]

Music[link]

Many of Franck's works employ "cyclic form", a method of achieving unity among several movements in which all of the principal themes of the work are generated from a germinal motif. The main melodic subjects, thus interrelated, are then recapitulated in the final movement. Franck's use of "cyclic form" is best illustrated by his Symphony in D Minor (1888).

	Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano, arranged for flute and piano 1. Allegretto moderato 2. Allegro 3. Ben moderato: Recitative-Fantasia 4. Allegretto poco mosso Performed by Albert Tipton (flute) and Mary Norris (piano)
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

His music is often contrapuntally complex, using a harmonic language that is prototypically late Romantic, showing a great deal of influence from Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. In his compositions, Franck showed a talent and a penchant for frequent, graceful modulations of key. Often these modulatory sequences, achieved through a pivot chord or through inflection of a melodic phrase, arrive at harmonically remote keys. Indeed, Franck's students report that his most frequent admonition was to always "modulate, modulate." Franck's modulatory style and his idiomatic method of inflecting melodic phrases are among his most recognizable traits.

Franck had huge hands, capable of spanning twelve white keys on the keyboard.^[62] This allowed him unusual flexibility in voice-leading between internal parts in fugal composition, and in the size of the repeated chords which are a feature of much of his keyboard music. Of the Violin Sonata's writing it has been said: "Franck, blissfully apt to forget that not every musician's hands were as enormous as his own, littered the piano part (the last movement in particular) with major-tenth chords ... most mere pianistic mortals ever since have been obligated to spread them in order to play them at all."^[63]

The key to his music may be found in his personality. His friends record that he was "a man of utmost humility, simplicity, reverence and industry." Louis Vierne, a pupil and later organist titulaire of Notre-Dame, wrote in his memoirs that Franck showed a "constant concern for the dignity of his art, for the nobility of his mission, and for the fervent sincerity of his sermon in sound. . . . Joyous or melancholy, solemn or mystic, powerful or ethereal: Franck was all those at Sainte-Clotilde."^[64] That appraisal applies well to all Franck's approach to music.

Legacy[link]

Unusually for a composer of such importance and reputation, Franck's fame rests largely on a small number of compositions written in his later years, particularly his Symphony in D minor (1886–88), the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra (1885), the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue for piano solo (1884), the Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major (1886), the Piano Quintet in F minor (1879), and the symphonic poem Le Chasseur maudit (1883). The Symphony was especially admired and influential among the younger generation of French composers and was highly responsible for reinvigorating the French symphonic tradition after years of decline. One of his best known shorter works is the motet setting Panis Angelicus, which was originally written for tenor solo with organ and string accompaniment, but is also arranged for other voices and instrumental combinations.

As an organist he was particularly noted for his skill in improvisation, and on the basis of merely twelve major organ works, Franck is considered by many the greatest composer of organ music after Bach. His works were some of the finest organ pieces to come from France in over a century, and laid the groundwork for the French symphonic organ style. In particular, his Grande Pièce Symphonique, a 25 minute work, paved the way for the organ symphonies of Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne, and Marcel Dupré.

Franck exerted a significant influence on music. He helped to renew and reinvigorate chamber music and developed the use of cyclic form. Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel remembered and employed the cyclic form, although their concepts of music were no longer the same as Franck's. Relating Franck as organist and composer to his place in French music, Smith states that "the concept of César Franck as organist and undisputed master of nineteenth-century French organ composition pervades nearly every reference to his works in other media.^[65]

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: César Franck

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: César Franck

• Free scores by César Franck in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Free scores by César Franck at the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by César Franck in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Free scores at the Mutopia Project
• International César Franck Society (German) and (French)
• Biography at Decca Classics
• Performances of works by César Franck in MP3 format at Logos Virtual Library
• L'Organiste played on virtual harmoniums
• More works by César Franck performed on virtual instruments
• César Franck at Naxos
• César Franck at Allmusic
• César Franck at the Internet Movie Database
• Official MySpace Page
• "Panis Angelicus" sung by Chloë Agnew
• "Panis Angelicus" sung by Saint Philips Boys Choir (soloists Jaymi Bandtock & Sam Harper)
• César Franck at the Notable Names Database
• César Franck at Find a Grave

v t e Ballet General information ballets companies glossary history music timeline Ballet terminology Ballet d'action Barre Ballet blanc Comic ballet Contemporary ballet Ballets de cour Demi-soloist Divertissement Narrative ballet Neoclassical ballet Opéra-ballet Pas de deux Pas de quatre Pas de trois Pièce d'occasion Pointe shoes Romantic ballet Turnout Tutu Variation Ballet by genre character classical contemporary neoclassical Ballet by region British French Italian Russian Dancers American British French Russian Technique Balanchine Bournonville Cecchetti Royal Academy Vaganova Ballet apparel dance belt leotard pointe shoes slippers tights tutu unitard Schools The National Ballet School of Canada Stuttgart Ballet Cuban National Ballet School Elmhurst School for Dance English National Ballet School Moscow State Academy of Choreography Royal Ballet School School of American Ballet La Scala Theatre Ballet School Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet Royal Winnipeg Ballet Companies American Ballet Theatre Anaheim Ballet Atlanta Ballet Ballet Manila Ballet Philippines Barcelona Ballet Berlin State Ballet Birmingham Royal Ballet Bolshoi Ballet Boston Ballet Cairo Opera Ballet Company Cape Town City Ballet Carolina Ballet Cincinnati Ballet Cuban National Ballet Dayton Ballet Donetsk Ballet Dutch National Ballet English National Ballet Finnish National Ballet Georgian National Ballet Greek National Opera Guangzhou Ballet Hamburg Ballet Hong Kong Ballet Houston Ballet Iaşi Romanian National Opera Iranian National Ballet Company Joffrey Ballet K-ballet Kiev Ballet Korea National Ballet Company La Scala Theatre Ballet Les Ballets de Monte Carlo Les Grands Ballets Canadiens Los Angeles Ballet Mariinsky Ballet Moldova National Opera Ballet National Ballet of Canada National Ballet of China National Ballet Theater of Puerto Rico National Opera and Ballet National Theatre Munich New Jersey Ballet New York City Ballet Norwegian National Opera and Ballet Oklahoma City Ballet Oregon Ballet Theatre Pacific Northwest Ballet Paris Opera Ballet Philippine Ballet Theatre Polish National Ballet Queensland Ballet Royal Danish Ballet Royal New Zealand Ballet Royal Swedish Ballet Royal Winnipeg Ballet San Francisco Ballet Scottish Ballet Shanghai Ballet Company Spanish National Dance Company Stuttgart Ballet The Australian Ballet The Royal Ballet Tokyo Ballet Tulsa Ballet Universal Ballet West Australian Ballet Ballet portal Did you know? today's news today's article today's biography today's picture recent news 2009 2008