Front: Photo Phonogram /J. Aubert

STEREO SRI 75059

CESAR FRANCK

GRANDE PIECE SYMPHONIQUE, OP. 17 FANTAISIE IN A MAJOR, OP. 16

PASTORALE, OP. 19 NO. 4

Side 1 :

GRANDE PIECE SYMPHONIQUE, OP. 17 . . .26:02

Side 2:

FANTAISIE IN A MAJOR, OP. 16 . 14:46

PASTORALE, OP. 19 NO. 4 . 8:11

MARCEL DUPRE, organ

Cesar Auguste Franck (1822-1890) could have been many things. He was born into a family which had produced distinguished painters since the early seventeenth century, and he remained interested in the graphic arts throughout his life. He could have followed in his father’s footsteps and become a banker. He certainly might have chosen the life of a concert pianist; he had studied from the time he was a small boy, and by the age of eleven he had already undertaken a concert tour which proved to be wearying but elating. He possessed, even as a youth, a grasp and appreciation of Flemish literature which properly nurtured could have matured into a career of intelligent and literate criticism.

Instead he became an organist, and the world is richer for it. Somehow the career fits the modest, religious, diligent, imaginative, and serene man, and the fact that he remained at the church of Sainte-Clotilde in Paris for over thirty years is some indication that the man fitted the career. He may, as some writers theorize, have been unfortunate in his marriage, and he was certainly unnoticed by the musical public for most of his life, but we know that in the organ loft he found a compensating satisfaction and beauty. Some of this beauty he noted down on paper, such as the works performed on this disc; no one knows how much other glorious music is now lost to us because it existed only as improvisation. Like many of France’s finest organists, he was magnificently equipped by training and natural gift to execute large-scale works at a moment’s notice, based on themes created and developed in his head for that moment. Indeed, his friend and fellow organist, Alexandre Guilmant, writes that Franck improvised a good while each day, clarifying and modifying his technique in these ephemeral compositions with the same assiduity he bestowed on his published works.

As early as his days at the Paris Conservatoire — he entered when he was fifteen — he was completely at home with a keyboard. His piano technique was excellent by any virtuoso standard, he could transpose at sight into foreign keys without, apparently, a shred of difficulty, and his several prizes in Fugue were won by works written in such a short time that his father rebuked him for not applying himself sufficiently to his task. Strangely enough, he received only a second prize in organ, although for his improvisation he combined two themes fugally in reversible counterpoint. Today, faced with technical standards so relaxed that we would hardly recognize such a feat, much less evaluate its difficulties correctly, we might involuntarily echo Dr. Johnson’s curious likening of a woman preaching to a dog walking on its hind legs: “It may not be done well,” he observed, “but one is surprised to find it done at all.”

In Franck’s case, however, “it” and all other aspects of his playing were almost certainly done very well indeed, because only a few years elapsed before he was invited to assume the post of organist at the large and important church of Sainte-Clotilde ... a church, moreover, which had just installed a splendid new pipe organ. This instrument was built by the Flemish organ maker Aristide Cavaille-Coll, the same man who built (or, rather, entirely rebuilt) the pipe organ for the church of Saint-Sulpice, on which Marcel Dupre recorded the material for this disc.

Cavaille-Coll was apparently much more than an ordinary organ builder. He had a good knowledge of music and he numbered among his friends the finest church musicians of the time, to whom he was enthusiastic, paternal, and generous. Franck often played on the exhibition or^an in Cavaille-Coll’s factory (the ‘Grande Piece Symphonique’ and the “Pastorale” had their first performances there, and the latter work is dedicated “a son ami Monsieur Aristide Cavaille-Coll”).

The fact that this particular organ builder was responsible for both the Sainte-Clotilde and Saint-Sulpice instruments has for the present recording a real significance: Franck, apparently so caught up in his own modesty that he never considered the possibility of his works being played by others, nevertheless left fairly complete details of registration for his pieces. (He was the first organ composer to do so, except for Mendelssohn, whose suggestions were sketchy and often too obvious to be of real use.) Naturally, Franck’s indications were based on the resources of the organ he himself played, and this organ, like all truly great musical creations, showed the unique stamp of its designer throughout. The Trompette, for example, which he indicates for the middle section of the Pastorale, was not a bright, insistent reed like the majority of such stops, but rather a light and crisp set of pipes which resembled an oboe register. Also, Cavaille-Coll’s design produced a Great organ and a Positif which were remarkably similar; hence Franck’s indications for one or the other of these keyboards are often more casual than we might otherwise expect. Then, too, there was no provision for coupling the Swell organ, or Recit, to the Great, since the two were so markedly dissimilar and disparate in size that such a combination would have been useless.

These same peculiarities of design are also substantially present in the Gallery Organ of Saint-Sulpice and for this recording M. Dupre was able to use the same kind of registration for these Franck works that the composer himself would have chosen. His authority for the performance lies not only in the written evidence of Franck’s own notations, but also in this quotation from Dupre’s reminiscence: “Guilmant, who was appointed organist of Trinity Church in 1872 was introduced to Franck whom he highly admired by Aristide Cavaille-Coll. One evening, Franck played his six Pieces at the Cavaille-Coll factory for Saint-Saens, Widor and Guilmant who were gathered there. This was related to me, first by Guilmant, then later on by Widor, and lastly by Saint-Saens . . . All three agreed about the year of their meeting, which took place in 1875.

“After the publishing of the Trois pieces in 1878, Guilmant played at Cavaille-Coll’s before Franck alone, the nine pieces which had been printed and which he had learned. Franck was most moved as he had never heard his pieces performed in that way. Guilmant did not fail to ask him for all possible details about their interpretation, which Franck gave him willingly while Guilmant scrupulously noted down all his indications.

“During his lifetime, Franck also showed Guilmant the outlines of his three Chorales which Guilmant was thus acquainted with before their posthumous publication. “I received this tradition directly from my Master Guilmant when I studied all the works of Cesar Franck with him in the course of the years 1907-1908, at Meudon, three years before he died. Later on, I was able to ascertain the perfect identity of this tradition with the indications I received in 1917 from Gabriel Pierne, Franck’s pupil and his immediate successor at Sainte-Clotilde.”

The three works performed here by M. Dupre are surely in direct kinship to Franck’s celebrated style of free improvisation, since their melodic materials have an unusual spontaneity and their formal development is not at all rigorous. The “Grande Piece Symphonique’ and the “Pastorale” are two of Six Pieces pour Grand Orgue, written in the years from I860 to 1862; the Fantaisie is the first of Trois Pieces which appeared in 1878.

(golden Jmports

The introductory section of the “Grande Piece Symphonique” combines a sturdily moving theme in constant eighth notes with a reflective antiphon in a lighter register. Another theme used sequentially rather than in true development leads to the statement of the work’s chief motif, powerful and militant, which is announced in the pedals, and thereafter dealt with in a variety of ways, some contrapuntal and some chiefly ornamental. Echoes of one of the introductory motifs conclude the first section. The slow movement offers a lovely melody, played on a solo reed stop, which gains its effect of serenity by the quiet simplicity of its regular four-measure phrases and by the alternation of the reed, later on, with a strong but mellow flute. The Andante is broken by a fleet Schumannesque scherzo, but returns, this time played with the Voix Celestes. The last section is based on the principal theme of the first, although Franck’s lasting predilection for cyclic writing bids him refer briefly to most of the previously-used melodic material. Now, however, the principal theme, formerly heard in F sharp minor, is presented in the parallel major on the full organ, first over a pedal line in moving eighth notes, next in a four-part fugue, and finally in that brilliant kind of summation which Franck could employ so excitingly.

One is tempted to feel that, with the massive composite of Reed and Diapason Choruses available on such an instrument, any other kind of ending to an extended work must necessarily be less exalted, but the “Fantaisie en La Majeur” produces its own special mood with a very quiet and subdued close. The entire work, in fact, is contemplative in a way that foretells the B minor Chorale, although Franck varies what might otherwise have been a preponderantly melancholy diet with the agitated theme which appears over a pattern of insistent triplets. The famous melody whose purity caused Saint-Saens to regret that he had not himself written anything so moving appears actually only once, in the middle of the piece, but vestiges of it recur in the closing measures.

Many composers for the organ have tried their hand at a “Pastorale”, but none with greater ingenuity than Franck. First he alternates the reedy charm of a duet on the oboe with a simple chordal passage on the flute; then, after a kind of rondo-scherzo, he disarmingly combines both with an adroitness which attests to his mastery of textures, techniques, and — such was the genius of the man — sentiment. The combination, so frequently met with in all his work, is his lasting monument.

Notes by CLAIR W. VAN AUSDALL

OTHER MERCURY GOLDEN IMPORTS:

BARTOK:

VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 2 Yehudi Menuhin, violin

Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra/ Antal Dorati SRI 75002

SAINT-SAENS:

SYMPHONY NO. 3 “ORGAN”

Marcel Dupre, organ

Detroit Symphony Orchestra/ Paul Paray

SRI 75003

BACH:

COMPLETE SUITES FOR UNACCOMPANIED CELLO Janos Starker, cello SRI 3-77002

BACH:

PRELUDES AND FUGUES

Marcel Dupre, Gallery Organ in the Church of Saint-Sulpice, Paris SRI 75046

This modern record can be played with every modern light-weight pick-up. The stereo sound, however, is reproduced only when stereo equipment is used.

Printed in The Netherlands

Previously released by Mercury Records as SR 90228