Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] Fabbri, Anna Maria

2. Works.

If one admits d’Indy’s proposition of a major stylistic gap between Rédemption (1871–2) and Les Eolides (1875–6), one must concur with his biassed assumption that Franck’s later compositions are principally identifiable by their preoccupation with harmonic techniques deriving from Tristan und Isolde. A very rich strain of chromaticism is indeed a consistent feature of his mature works, and still more of the works of a number of his pupils, where it often appears as a complex undercurrent to a less involved surface, with relatively diatonic melodies harmonized in the style of Tristan. However, many non-harmonic features of Franck’s ‘late’ manner were present at an earlier date than that suggested by d’Indy, and, as previously noted, his earliest flirtations with Tristanesque harmony began at least with the fifth Béatitude, written some time before 1875. The bowdlerized version of the opening of the Tristan prelude found in Les Eolides was only a step towards the high chromaticism of the final works, which he had to some extent used even before his acquaintance with Wagner’s opera. The foundation of his chromatic procedures, like Wagner’s in Tristan, is the juxtaposition of tonally unrelated chords by means of logical part movement; in this they had a common source (ex.4), although Wagner was to explore the association of much more distantly related harmonies.

An outstanding feature of Franck’s harmonic language is his use of the ‘chord pair’ (as in bars 1 and 2 of Les Eolides) where the second chord carries with it the impression of a sforzando. A classical formulation of this device appears in the ninth bar of the first movement of the Violin Sonata, but it also occurs in much earlier pieces, as in the first symphonic interlude from Rédemption (quoted above). It is often associated with Franck’s characteristic iambic rhythm in the attendant melody (see ex.5), as in the Violin Sonata. He often applied his method of thematic development to a harmonic context; a chord pair, for instance, may be repeated with a slight alteration to the second chord, resulting in a stronger implied sforzando (Violin Sonata, third movement, bars 17–18). The technique may also be applied to whole phrases, with more than one element being subjected to variation: again, the Six pièces furnish a prototype (Fantaisie, bars 9–12). Franck was particularly fond of incorporating these motifs into a bar-form (AAB) phrase structure; a good example is the second subject of the first movement of the Quintet. Much of the slow movement of this work is organized on the same principle; thus, bars 1–4 may be analysed as Stollen (bar 1), Stollen (bar 2; chord on third beat varied) and Abgesang (bars 3 and 4; cadential figure derived from the preceding two bars). Franck’s early explorations in the juxtaposition of chords had repercussions in the music of a later generation, notably that of Debussy, for whom the concept of contrasting harmonic colours was fundamental: his Les sons et les parfums (1910) begins with the varied repetition of a chord pair.

Franck’s formal procedures ranged from the simplistic dovetailing of ternary and sonata forms in the first movement of the Quartet to the complex synthesis of the Variations symphoniques. The architectural principle with which his name is linked, cyclic form, sprang originally from two distinct sources: Beethoven’s dramatic recall of previously heard themes, and the monothematic procedure whereby a number of movements employ variants or ‘transformations’ of the same material, as in Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy and E major Quartet op.125. Both these models have been suggested as the inspiration behind Franck’s remarkable Trio in F minor, but a more likely blueprint is to be found in the early piano sonatas of Mendelssohn and the Scherzo of his early Piano Quartet in B minor, which is distinctly echoed in the corresponding movement of Franck’s Trio. It was Liszt’s achievement to have welded the two principles of thematic recall and monothematicism into a monumental formal process which could unify a multi-movement cycle or even, in Les préludes and the Piano Sonata, encompass them all in a continuous sonata first movement plan. Apart from the Trio, where the use of the cyclic technique savours of something of an intellectual exercise, Franck’s first important attempt at this kind of unification was the Grande pièce symphonique, which shows clearly his immeasurable debt to the music of Liszt’s Weimar years. Yet another large-scale single-movement composition is the Prélude, choral et fugue, whose chromatic generating motif (later becoming the fugue subject) further emphasizes his underlying relationship to Liszt, irrespective of the inroads the music of Wagner had made on his sensibilities. Despite its lack of conventional breaks between movements, the work basically conforms to the three-movement plan which Franck found most congenial. He had already experimented with the triptych form of Beethoven’s Les adieux sonata in some of his early piano works and later in a number of the Six pièces. Of the other instrumental music, only the Violin Sonata and the Quartet deviate from this tripartite layout, to which all the important instrumental works of his pupils also conform.

No appraisal of Franck’s total output can ignore the wide qualitative gulf separating the broad categories of vocal and instrumental music. Surprisingly for a skilled contrapuntist his choral writing too often suffers from unrelieved homophony; the discrepancy may be seen in a hybrid work like Psyché in which the choral sections simply disfigure the remainder. Except in one or two instances he was unable to make much of the contemporary mélodie (his grasp of prosody was notoriously weak), and the prevailing sentimental style of church music in mid-19th-century France was hardly fertile soil in which his gifts might flourish. Nevertheless, one or two of his sacred pieces, notably the festal offertory Quae est ista (1871), were distinguished additions to the liturgical repertory. Franck’s cardinal weaknesses included his lack of literary discernment and corresponding readiness to rely on the literary tastes of others, and the limited spectrum of experience he could convincingly express in music. The failure of the operas cannot be blamed entirely on their absurd and anachronistic librettos, and in spite of many magnificent pages, the choral works are unlikely to find admirers, fundamentally because Franck was unable to realize their essentially dramatic schemes. This stricture is particularly applicable to Rédemption where, as has often been remarked, he was lamentably unable to delineate the darker aspects of human nature described in the text, the characterization of Lucifer being utterly ineffectual. Les béatitudes, Franck’s magnum opus by which both he and his disciples set so much store, suffers initially from too rigid a formal plan: each of the eight sections begins with an exposition of a particular evil, proceeds to a celestial prophecy and concludes with the voice of Christ intoning words from the Sermon on the Mount. A certain pedestrianism in melody and rhythm is exposed by the obsessively chromatic harmony. Yet the monolithic design of the total work, in ‘tonal architectural’ terms implemented by an identification of psychological states with specific keys (as with Messiaen a kind of cosmic joy is attributed to F major), is very impressive and ought to preclude anything but a complete performance. Parts three and four and much of parts five and six represent his outstanding accomplishments on a large canvas.

Franck’s finest compositional achievement is represented by the symphonic, chamber and keyboard works, one of the most distinguished contributions to the field by any French musician – especially the last three chamber works, in which Franck found a balance between his inherent emotionalism and his preoccupation with counterpoint and Classical forms. They constitute his legacy to his disciples, and the intense interest in chamber music shown by Castillon, from the moment of his becoming a student of Franck, is perhaps symbolic of the importance of formalistic works for the Franckist school as a whole. There were few precedents in France for such an involvement; those that did exist, such as the genuinely neo-classical symphonies of Gounod and Bizet of 1855 and the early piano quintet and piano trio by the eclectic Saint-Saëns, were isolated attempts and give little hint of what was to follow. To his pupils, Franck communicated both the Beethovenian idealism inherent in the cultivation of the strict genres of symphony, quartet and sonata and the harmonic innovations of late Romanticism. This double allegiance to the Viennese tradition on the one hand, and to Liszt and Wagner on the other, was undoubtedly responsible for the self-indulgent massiveness which characterizes many Franckist works and which sometimes proved to be a source of stylistic confusion, as Cooper (1951) has observed about the Piano Trio by Lekeu. The finest products of the movement, however, such as the chamber music and the Symphony of Chausson, in whose Piano Trio may be observed the most direct workings of Franck’s influence, align this monumentality with a sweeping lyricism.

Franck’s pupils were attracted to his teaching technique, his innate receptiveness to new ideas and his seriousness, a quality which stood in marked contrast to the superficiality of the Opéra-dominated establishment. After 1872 only a few, including Augusta Holmès and Lekeu, were taught privately; the majority, often at the instigation of Coquard, attended the organ class where most of Franck’s composition teaching took place. Although he would naturally assess individual compositions by members of his closest circle, his main medium of communication seems to have been the improvisation sessions which took up most of the class’s time; through these he reached a wider audience, including such peripheral members of the school as Fumet and Lazzari. He was not primarily concerned with keyboard technique, as Vierne and Tournemire found to their dismay when later confronted with Widor. His sphere of influence was wide: in addition to those pupils already mentioned, Charles Bordes, Guy Ropartz, Dukas, Bréville, Pierné, Guilmant and Magnard passed at some stage through his hands. Few other teachers can be credited with such an achievement.

Franck, César