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
But, chiefest of all, it expressed the people described in the section
of "Jean-Christophe" significantly entitled "Dans la Maison." It
expressed the essential France hidden by the glare of the Third
Republic. The music of Cesar Franck is the music of the people driven
into themselves by the conditions of modern life. It is the music of the
fine ones who stand hesitant on the threshold of the world, and have
incessantly to struggle for the power to act, for faith and hope. It is
the music of those who in the midst of millions feel themselves forsaken
and alone and powerless, and in whose obscure and laborious existence
Franck himself shared. It is a thing turned away from the market-place,
full of the quiet of the inner chamber. Through so much of Franck one
feels the steady glow of the lamp in the warm room. With its songs of
loneliness and doubt and ruth, its self-communings and vigils and
prayers, its struggle for the sunlight of perfect confidence and
healthiness and zest, it might come directly out of the lives of a
half-dozen of the eminent persons whom France produced during the
closing years of the nineteenth century. Romain Rolland himself is of
this sort. It was for these people, self-distrustful, disillusioned,
doubtful, that Charles Peguy wrote, bidding them remember the divine
origin of the life and the institutions that seemed so false to them,
bidding them remember that the Republic itself was the result of a
mystical impulse in the human heart, that the dead of a race live on in
the bodies of the breathing, and that the members of a folk are one. The
mysticism and Catholicism of Paul Claudel, the revulsion from the
scepticism of Renan and Anatole France that has become so general in
recent French thought, the traditionalism, nay, the intellectual
reaction, of the latest France, are all foreshadowed and outlined in the
music of Cesar Franck. He must have pulsed with the very heart of his
adopted country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account