The Music of France

Week 5: Classicism and Early Romanticism

François-Joseph GossecChevalier de Saint-GeorgesÉtienne MéhulHector BerliozThe Franck Symphonist SchoolFrench Orchestras

François-Joseph Gossec

1734 – 1829

About Gossec

❖ Contemporary of Joseph Haydn

❖ Worked with Jean-Philippe Rameau

❖ Prolific symphonist of pre-Revolutionary France

❖ Opera and choral composer as well

François-Joseph Gossec

Symphony in D Major, Op. 5 No. 3: III - Minuet

Mathias BamertLondon Mozart Players

Minuet & Trio Form

Minuet Trio Minuet da Capo

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A A’B

A A’B

C C’D

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges1745-1799

About Saint-Georges

❖ Born in Guadeloupe, lived most of his life, and died, in France

❖ Son of a planter and his African slave

❖ Birth name: Joseph Bologne, but his father acquired the name “de Saint-Georges” and so Joseph often used the name, although he was not eligible for royal titles or possessions.

❖ Also known as a champion fencer

❖ Apparently a student of Gossec’s for a while

Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges

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Violin Concerto Op. 3 No. 1: Rondeau

Zhou Qian, violinNorbert Kraft, conductorToronto Chamber Orchestra

The Rondo Trap

❖ In a rondo, a single block of music—called the reprise—returns periodically.

❖ That return can become predictable, and tedious.

❖ Saint-Georges doesn’t seem to be concerned …

a a’ b a a’ a a’ a a’c c’ d e c’ f f’

Trans Trans

Étienne Méhul

1763–1817

About Méhul

❖ Important opera composer during the Revolutionary period

❖ A fine symphonist, contemporary to Beethoven’s middle-period works

Étienne Méhul

Symphony No. 1 in G Minor: IV - Allegro agitato

Jorge RotterRhenish Philharmonic Orchestra

About the Symphony

❖ Dates from 1808, the same year as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

❖ Partakes of the Sturm und Drang that was all the rage thirty years before in Austro-Germanic countries

❖ The Finale is Haydnesque in that it uses mostly one theme throughout—so-called monothematic sonata form

P P 1T 1S 2T 2S K

P 1T 1S 2T 2S K

Development ….

Exposition

Recapitulation

“I understood all the dangers of my enterprise; I foresaw the cautious welcome that the music-lovers would give my symphonies. I plan to write new ones for next winter and shall try to write them… to accustom the public gradually to think that a Frenchman may follow Haydn and Mozart at a distance.”

—Étienne Méhul, 1808

Hector Berlioz

1803–1869

Hector Berlioz

Harold in Italy - II: Pilgrim’s March

William Primrose / Charles Munch / Boston Symphony Orchestra

Harold in Italy

❖ Written in 1834, as a result of a commission from the famed violinist Nicolò Paganini, who wanted a viola concerto.

❖ The piece puzzled and disappointed Paganini, who declined to perform it.

I conceived the idea of writing a series of scenes for the orchestra, in which the viola should find itself mixed up, like a person more or less in action, always preserving his own individuality. The background I formed from my recollections of my wanderings in the Abruzzi, introducing the viola as a sort of melancholy dreamer, in the style of Byron’s Childe Harold. Hence the title of my symphony, Harold in Italy.

Hector Berlioz

There are excellent reasons for reading Childe Harold ’s Pilgrimage. But among them I cannot find any that concern Berlioz or this symphony, except for the jejune value of the discovery that no definite elements of Byron’s poem have penetrated the impregnable fortress of Berlioz’s encyclopædic inattention. Many picturesque things are described in famous stanzas of Childe Harold, but nothing remotely resembling Berlioz’s Pilgrims’ March, nor his serenade in the Abbruzzi. ... There is no trace in Berlioz’s music of any of the famous passages in Childe Harold. No doubt “there was a sound of revelry by night” in the Orgy of Brigands, but the Duchess of Richmond’s ball was not an orgy of brigands, nor was it interrupted by a march of pilgrims singing their evening prayer. Nor is there anything to correspond to an invocation of the ocean, except a multitude of grammatical solecisms equivalent to Byron’s “there let him lay.” There, then, let Berlioz lie; the whitest liar since Cyrano de Bergerac.

Donald Francis Tovey

Berlioz wrote that he improvised this movement “in a couple of hours one evening over my fire” and then spent more than six years brushing it up, even though “it was always completely successful from the moment of its first performance.” It was encored at the work’s premiere, in fact, just as the corresponding-and strikingly similar—movement of Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony was. Convent bells are not represented here by real bells or chimes, but, as Berlioz noted, are ingeniously “suggested by two harp-notes doubled by the flutes, oboes and horns.”

Richard Freed

On Form

❖ It is a common shibboleth amongst commentators to describe the Pilgrim’s March as being devoid of a clear form, beyond a simplistic A-B-A plus Coda.

❖ I rather doubted that.

❖ So I took a good look at it and discovered that it’s in good old standard Rondo form—with an added interlude.

❖ Reprise: contains the “March” of the pilgrims, which is stated with numerous minor variants. I called those “a”, “b”, and the like.

❖ Most statements of the march theme end in a little rhythmic pattern, which I call “R”.

Reprise Reprise RepriseEpisode 1 Episode 2 Interlude Coda

Reprise Reprise Reprise

Reprise Reprise Reprise

Reprise Reprise Reprise

César Franck and the Franck School

Pierre MonteuxSan Francisco Symphony

The “Franck School” Symphonies

❖ César Franck: Symphony in D Minor

❖ Vincent D’Indy

❖ Symphony No. 2

❖ Symphony on a French Mountain Air

❖ Ernest Chausson: Symphony in B-flat Major

Characteristics

❖ Use of ‘cyclic’ themes that occur throughout the composition

❖ Not the idée fixe of Berlioz, which is more like a character tune or signifier

❖ The cyclic theme evolves, but not as a character signifier

❖ Similar to ‘motto’ theme in Tchaikovsky and Elgar

❖ Unadorned orchestration—no fancy bling à la Berlioz or Wagner

Recordings

❖ As it turns out, Pierre Monteux and the San Francisco Symphony recorded all of the “Franck School” symphonies during the 1940s

❖ Thus the following montage …

French Orchestras

French Orchestras

❖ Orchestre Symphonique de Paris

❖ Concerts de Walter Straram

❖ Orchestre National de France (aka ORF, aka ORTF)

❖ Paris Conservatoire Orchestra

❖ Paris Opera Orchestra

❖ Orchestre de Paris