In the park facing the suburban Paris basilica of
Sainte-Clotilde, where Franck was organist for 32
years, there is a memorial sculpture by Alfred Lenoir,
which places the composer before the manuals, head
bowed, rapt in meditation as an angel, shielding him
with outspread wings, whispers. Indeed, Franck's best
music often evokes the voices of angels, a sense of
being suspended (as he was in the organ loft) between
earth and heaven, the worldly and the divine. Hence,
the "serene anxiety" which t...(+)
In the park facing the suburban Paris basilica of
Sainte-Clotilde, where Franck was organist for 32
years, there is a memorial sculpture by Alfred Lenoir,
which places the composer before the manuals, head
bowed, rapt in meditation as an angel, shielding him
with outspread wings, whispers. Indeed, Franck's best
music often evokes the voices of angels, a sense of
being suspended (as he was in the organ loft) between
earth and heaven, the worldly and the divine. Hence,
the "serene anxiety" which the critic, Georges-Jean
Aubry, attributed to him. In the Trois Chorals, his
final work, this mystical hovering attains its most
richly compelling form.
At the suggestion of the publisher, Auguste Durand,
Franck began the Chorals while on summer holiday at
Nemours and completed them on his return to Paris --
the third and last choral is dated September 30, 1890.
On October 2, he played them on a piano for his organ
class at the Conservatoire -- which included Vierne and
Tournemire -- with his last student, Guillaume Lekeu,
taking the pedal part. An accident the preceding May,
in which Franck had been struck in the chest by an
omnibus, had left him weakened. A chill taken at the
beginning of October soon turned to pleurisy, but he
insisted on returning to the loft of Sainte-Clotilde on
October 20 to determine the registration of the
Chorals. He came home to take to his bed, his condition
wavering, his mind deliriously occupied with a fugue,
and died on the morning of November 8.
The formal plan of the first, E major Choral has been
the subject of debate; the difficulty lies in
attempting to equate what Franck has actually done with
pre-existing models. Franck himself tried to explain to
his students that "You will see, the Choral is not the
thing itself -- the true choral becomes in the course
of the work." It opens with a flood of melody which
Vincent d'Indy analyzed into seven thematic cells, of
which, only the last -- a six bar phrase -- resembles
what J. S. Bach would have understood as "choral." The
work proceeds through an ever more fantastic,
chromatically saturated series of contrapuntal
variations, in which one or another of the cells
informs every voice, imparting a polyphonic
incandescence, transcending mere punctus contra punctus
cleverness, until the Bach-like fragment stands forth
tutta forza and exultant.
This, the A Minor Choral introduces a proper four-voice
choral which eventually subdues the coruscations before
rising in great arpeggiated chords to a central dolce
espressivo cantilena. This incantatory stream of liquid
silver pours forth like ardent prayer, with growing
modulatory and contrapuntal involvement until it
attains a great, pedal-underlined slargando climax. The
flickering scintillations of the opening return,
surmounted by the choral and subdued again to a docile
accompaniment. Wrought to a suspenseful coda, it ends
on a triumphant A major tierce de Picardie.
Source: AllMusic
(https://www.allmusic.com/composition/chorals-3-for-org
an-m-38-40-mc0002494556).
Although originally written for Pipe Organ, I created
this Arrangement of the Adagio from the Chorale in A
Minor (FWV 40 No. 3 Mvt. 2) for String Quintet (2
Violins, Viola, Cello & Bass).
PARTITION