Program Notes

César Franck (1822-1890)
Piano Quintet in F Minor (ca. 1880)

Notes for: August 8, 2023

What would inspire a composer described by friends as “a man of the utmost humility, simplicity, reverence, and industry” to compose a startlingly tempestuous piano quintet that overflows with searing passion? In César Franck’s case, the answer might be: love. Specifically, his passion for a beautiful young student.

Franck was a piano prodigy who after a brief touring career settled in Paris and became a church organist renowned for his organ compositions and improvisations. In 1872 he became professor of organ at the Paris Conservatoire, where he also became an informal mentor to composition students who were inspired by his fresh ideas about what French music could be. Franck’s aim was to combine Gallic color and tonality with German Classical structure. Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, with its lush chromatic harmonies, and Liszt’s promotion of cyclical form were his inspirations.

You can hear these ideas played out in the dramatically gripping Piano Quintet, which Franck wrote during a late-life surge of composing. All three movements are in sonata form; but within that Classical framework, the music pushes emotions to the limit. The Quintet is cyclic in nature, with themes from the first movement reappearing later and giving the work a satisfying thematic unity. In each movement, there are a striking number of harmonic modulations. (Franck’s Conservatoire students noted his constant exhortations to “Modulate, modulate!”) Throughout, the music smolders, with the stormy outer movements bursting with emotion and the wistful middle movement filled with longing. Nadia Boulanger noted that she had never seen so many ppp and fff in one chamber piece.

The opening movement sets the tone for the Quintet. A slow introduction presents two contrasting themes: a fierce downward sweep from the strings, which the piano answers with a gentle, flowing melody. These two contrasting themes animate the Allegro that follows. Toward its end, Franck combines the themes in an escalation of tension before the movement comes to an exhausted close. The piano theme recurs in both the “molto sentimento” second movement and the fiery final Allegro, with its atmospheric opening, deft combining of the contrasting themes, and unrelenting passionate intensity.

All that emotion elicited strong responses. Saint-Saëns, who sight-read the piano part at the Quintet’s premiere – and who purportedly was in love with the same woman – became increasingly upset as the music unfolded and stormed off the stage at the end, refusing to shake Franck’s hand or accept Franck’s gift of the manuscript. Franck’s wife hated it, dismissing it with one word: “Ugh!” Debussy, on the other hand, was thrilled. As one critic wryly summed up: “The piano quintet is, by any measure, not quite the sound that anyone would expect to hear from the organ-loft.”

Copyright © 2023 by Barbara Leish