Fin de siècle

France: Saint-
Saëns, Fauré, and
Franck
Saint-Saëns, Fauré, and the bande à Franck
Historical context
1. First half of 19th Century—France

2. Second half of 19th Century—Germany

3. Nationalistic tensions

4. 2 “schools” in France: through Saint-Saëns and Franck

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Background

Left: Saint-Saëns

Right: later in
life
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Silent film of
Saint-Saëns
playing Valse
Mignonne
(audio
superimposed
from a separate
recording of
Saint-Saëns)
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Background

 Neoclassicism: “moderation, logic, clarity, balance and precision.”

 Prolific

 Extent of piano music: Études (opp.52, 111, 135), Concertos

 Characteristics of piano music: salon, exoticisms/Orientalism

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Background

 Interest in Bach/antiquated styles/Baroque French music

 Conservatism:

“Throughout his career his art was one of amalgamation and adaptation rather than that of pursuing new and
original paths; and this led Debussy to epitomize him as ‘the musician of tradition’. Saint-Saëns himself
suggested: ‘I am an eclectic spirit. It may be a great defect, but I cannot change it: one cannot make over
one's personality’.” –Sabina Teller Ratner
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Études

 Étude No. 3, Op. 52

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Études

 Étude No. 3, Op. 52, Prélude et fugue en Fa mineur

 Étude No. 2, Op. 52

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Études

 Étude No. 3, Op. 52, Prélude et fugue en Fa mineur

 Étude No. 2, Op. 52, Pour l'indépendance des doigts

 Étude No. 5, Op. 111

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Études

 Étude No. 3, Op. 52, Prélude et fugue en Fa mineur

 Étude No. 2, Op. 52, Pour l'indépendance des doigts

 Étude No. 5, Op. 111, Tierces majeures chromatiques

 Étude No. 2, Op. 135

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Études

 Étude No. 3, Op. 52, Prélude et fugue en Fa mineur

 Étude No. 2, Op. 52, Pour l'indépendance des doigts

 Étude No. 5, Op. 111, Tierces majeures chromatiques

 Étude No. 2, Op. 135, Alla fuga

Each of his three sets of Études contain fugal writing (the first two contain Preludes and Fugues). Op. 135 is
for the left hand alone, while Op. 111 contains incredibly virtuosic writing, ending with a Toccata.
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Stylistic Characteristics

 Neo-classical pianistic writing—this can be seen in the scalar textures, use of Alberti bass, “classical,”
Mozartian virtuosity

 Harmonic clarity—with the exception of some adventurousness (exploration of third relationships), his
harmonic palette is largely conservative in relation to his contemporaries

 Formal procedures related to Classical models—sonata form is quite clear

 Interest in antiquated forms (seen in his use of fugues)—influential on future generations

 Outside of his 5 Piano Concertos, his three sets of Études (one for left hand alone) are his most important
contributions to piano repertoire
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Relationship with Fauré:

“In 1875 Saint-Saëns married the 19-year-old Marie-Laure Truffot. The marriage was not a
success. Saint-Saëns's mother disapproved, and her son was difficult to live with. Two sons
were born who died within six weeks of each other in 1878, one (aged two and a half) by
falling out of a fourth-floor window, the second (aged six months) of a childhood malady.
Saint-Saëns blamed his wife and three years later, while on holiday with her, suddenly
vanished. A legal separation followed, and she never saw him again. She died in 1950 at
Cauderan, near Bordeaux, in her 95th year. To a certain extent Saint-Saëns found an outlet for
his affection and frustrated paternal instincts in a close relationship with Fauré. Indeed, as the
years went by he tended to regard the latter's growing family as his own, and while he did all
he could to further his protégé's career he became, for Fauré's wife and children, a benevolent
uncle.”—Sabina Teller Ratner
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Background

Left: Fauré as a young man; above, in later life at the piano

Right: famous portrait by John Singer Sargent
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Piano Works
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Background

 Cited by some as the most original and French composer of the period

First period (1881-1886)

Second period (1892-1902)

Third period (1905-1921) “increasing economy of expression, boldness of harmony and

enrichment of polyphony” –Jean-Michel Nectoux

 Extent of piano music: Chopinesque genres, 2 extended works

 Stylistic characteristics of piano music: several distinctive characteristics are frequently cited:

1. Vocal, melodic writing

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Background

2. Harmony:

“the flexibility of the modulations to remote keys and the sudden short cuts back to the original key are
unprecedented aspects of Fauré’s originality.”

(French author Proust, called Fauré’s music “intoxicating”).

 Influence on Impressionists: highly coloristic use of harmony

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Nocturnes and Barcarolles

 Nocturne No. 2 in B major, op. 33

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Nocturnes and Barcarolles

 Nocturne No. 2 in B major, op. 33

 Barcarolle No. 5 in F-sharp minor, Op. 66

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Nocturnes and Barcarolles

 Nocturne No. 2 in B major, op. 33

 Barcarolle No. 5 in F-sharp minor, Op. 66

 Impromptu No. 5 in F-sharp minor, Op. 102

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Nocturnes, Barcarolles, and Impromptus

 Nocturne No. 2 in B major, op. 33

 Barcarolle No. 5 in F-sharp minor, Op. 66

 Impromptu No. 5 in F-sharp minor, Op. 102

 Nocturne No. 13 in B minor, op. 119

“Finished the last day of 1921, this work crowns the pianistic achievement of Fauré, who did not write
anything more except the Trio and String Quartet. The dimensions are more vast and imposing than those of
any Nocturne since No. 7. And in no other work do the musical and dramatic contrasts between the middle
and outer sections reach such an overwhelming intensity. The sublime opening, whose polyphonic writing is
equal in purity and intensity to the most exalted pages of Bach, is a poignant evocation of aging. The Allegro
(in B major) tries to escape this reality with a passionate evocation of memories of a happy bygone youth, but
the pitiless present has the last word: the end is nothing but ashes and the icy grip of imminent death.” –
François-René Tranchefort
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
Stylistic Characteristics

 Melodic mastery—parallel to his skill as a writer of Melodie, Faure’s piano music is never without a
lushly, vocally-satisfying melody; a “French Schubert” in this regard

 Coloristic, modulatory harmony—perhaps his most distinguishable characteristic; a disorienting and

sometimes breathtaking manipulation of harmony throughout all his works, but especially pronounced in
the late Nocturnes and Barcarolles; this is related to modal procedures and prefigures the most extreme
experiments of Debussy and Ravel

 Genre conservativism—formal innovation is limited with all models borrowed from Chopin; this could
be named as one way in which he accepted the influence of Saint-Saëns
César Franck
(1822-1890)
Background

Left: Franck at the organ of St.

Clotilde
Middle: most famous photo
Right: the monument to Franck at St.
Clotilde
César Franck (1822-1890)
Background

 Like Saint-Saëns, a mentor to Chausson, Chabrier, Lekeu, d’Indy, Vierne, and Duparc (“la bande à
Franck”)

 Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue

 Interest in late Beethoven/structural cyclicism

 Disorienting modulations/chromaticism

 Ambitious forms

 Extent of piano music

 Organ
César Franck (1822-1890)
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue

 Criticisms

Saint-Saëns wrote of the work shortly after its publication that is was: “Uncouth, and tiresome to play, in
which the chorale is no chorale, and the fugue no fugue, for it breaks down as soon as the exposition is over
and wanders on through endless digressions which are no more like a fugue than a mollusk is like a mammal,
and which are a dear price to pay for a brilliant peroration.”

Alfred Cortot, nearly 50 years later, responded to this criticism, and described the Fugue in particular as a
means to an end, “emanating from a psychological necessity rather than from a principle of musical
composition.”

Stephen Hough: “It is as if a ‘fugue’, as a symbol of intellectual rigour, was the only way Franck could find a
voice to express fully the hesitant, truncated sobs of the Prelude and the anguished, syncopated lament of the
Chorale. Not that the Fugue solves the problem - this is the function of the ‘motto’ theme; but the rules of
counterpoint have given the speaker a format in which the unspeakable can be spoken.”
César Franck (1822-1890)
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue

 Highly Chromatic
César Franck (1822-1890)
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue

 Highly Chromatic

 Organ-like writing
César Franck (1822-1890)
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue

 Highly Chromatic

 Organ-like writing throughout

 Connections to Bach, Wagner, Liszt; The Prelude, Chorale and Fugue uses three musical
ideas—the most distinctive are the “cross-shaped” Chorale theme and the chromatic
Fugue subject. Stephen Hough writes:

“The first motivic idea (the fugue subject) is clearly related to the Bach Cantata ‘Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen,
Zagen’, and also to the ‘Crucifixus’ from the B minor Mass; the other idea appears as the ‘bell motif’ in
Wagner's Parsifal [. . .] Both of the original Bach themes mentioned above refer to the sufferings of Christ,
and the 'motto' motif of redemption happens to be shaped like a cross.”
César Franck (1822-1890)
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue

 Connections to Bach, Wagner, Liszt:

Franck’s Fugue subject:

César Franck (1822-1890)
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue

 Connections to Bach, Wagner, Liszt:

Franck’s Fugue subject

“Crucifixus” from Bach’s B minor Mass:

César Franck (1822-1890)
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue

 Connections to Bach, Wagner, Liszt:

Franck’s Fugue subject

“Crucifixus” from Bach’s B minor Mass

Liszt’s “Weinen, Klagen” Variations:
César Franck (1822-1890)
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue

 Connections to Bach, Wagner, Liszt:

Franck’s Chorale theme:

César Franck (1822-1890)
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue

 Connections to Bach, Wagner, Liszt:

Franck’s Chorale theme

Wagner’s Parsifal:
César Franck (1822-1890)
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue

 Connections to Bach, Wagner, Liszt:

Franck’s Chorale theme

Wagner’s Parsifal
A more salient comparison: Bach’s 24th Prelude and Fugue (bwv 869) from Book 1 of the
Well-Tempered Clavier (the Prelude derives from the hymn “O Sacred Head” and the
walking bass in often interpreted as the footsteps of Christ walking to Golgotha, “the place
of the skull”). The Fugue also has abundant religious interpretations:
César Franck (1822-1890)
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue

 Highly Chromatic

 Organ-like writing throughout

 Connections to Bach, Wagner, Liszt

 Structural Cyclicism: at the end of the fugue, a “cadenza” inexplicably begins, and
gradually the figuration of the Prelude appears, followed by the Chorale theme, and
finally, the Fugue subject
César Franck (1822-1890)
Prelude, Chorale and Fugue

 Highly Chromatic

 Organ-like writing throughout

 Connections to Bach, Wagner, Liszt

 Structural Cyclicism

 Possible Narrative?
César Franck (1822-1890)
Stylistic Characteristics

 Richly contrapuntal style of writing and interest in formal models from Bach and Beethoven

 Highly Chromatic harmony—most immediately the comparison is with Wagner’s musical language
from Tristan

 Dense, organ-like textures—relatable to his role as an organist

 Cyclicism/Experimentation with form—similar to the experiments with Liszt, Franck attempted to mold
antiquated forms into modern models; thus the Prelude and Fugue is realized as something new; his much-
discussed cyclic procedure is adopted from the music of late Beethoven