Musical Portraits : Interpretations of Twenty Modern ComposersRosenfeld, Paul
History
Musical Portraits : Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers
Rosenfeld, Paul
Composers; Music -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Music -- 20th century -- History and criticism
The career of one fated to serve the art of music in the Paris of
Franck's lifetime, and to wait thirty years for the flowering of his
genius, was of necessity obscure and sad. The
"yeux menteurs, l'hypocrisie
Des serrements de mains,
La masque d'amitie cachant la jalousie,
Les pales lendemains
De ces jours de triomphe"...
of which M. Saint-Saens in his little volume of verse complains somewhat
pompously, were unknown to Cesar Franck. For this man, even in the years
of his prime, there were only the humiliations, the disappointments that
are the lot of uncomprehended genius. He had rich pupils, among them the
Vicomte Vincent d'Indy, but not one of them seems to have come forward
to help him, to secure him greater time for composition, to save him
from wasting his precious days in instructing a few amateurs. All his
life, until the very last of his seventy years, Cesar Franck was obliged
to arise every morning at five o'clock in order to have a couple of
hours in which to be free to compose before the waxing day obliged him
to begin trotting from one end of Paris to the other giving lessons.
During his lifetime he had to content himself with half-prepared
performances of his works, had to resign himself to having composers of
operettas preferred to him when chairs at the _Conservatoire_ became
vacant, to receiving practically no recognition from a government
pretending with hue and cry to protect and encourage the arts. Had it
not been for the fervor and faithfulness with which Ysaye labored to
spread his renown, practically cramming down the throats of an unwilling
public the violin sonata and the quartet, the man would not have known
any success at all even during the very last years of his career. As it
was, his reputation spread only after he was dead. Then, of course, the
inevitable monument was erected to him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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