I don’t despise the French,
Allow me to apologize. I know it’s pretty standard to hate
them. They’ve always been good to me, though – very tolerant of my
gangster-film French and American enthusiasm.
I particularly love their classical music. Normally I don’t
ascribe to the virtue of one nation’s culture over another, but something about
their music is special. Maybe it’s the dynamic tension between the huge
cultural institutions and oversight France produces, and the counterbalancing impulse
not only to rebel against conventions, but to disregard them entirely. Keeps
things fresh.
Sometimes this combination of gutsiness and playfulness can
backfire, leading to thin, arch work that doesn’t resonate. Still, the batting average
is pretty damn good, and the dozen listed here are consistently rewarding to
hear.
Here’s a subjective list of my 12 favorites. Please note
that there are many that almost made it, and are certainly worth listening to –
Halevy, de Machaut, Delerue, Auric, des Prez, and more. I am counting out
Chopin and Stravinsky – each has typed himself unmistakably as a son of his
country of origin. AND there are many French composers that drive me NUTS –
Gounod, Massenet, Rameau, Lalo, Lully, Ravel, Boulez . . .
So here we go.
Marin Marais (1656-1728)
Master of the viola de gamba, he was not afraid of
complexity and dissonance, and created conceptual pieces such as “Le
Labyrinthe,” “La Gamme,” and the “Tableau de l’Operation de la Taille.” A busy
guy, he had 19 children. His life was horribly misrepresented in the film “Tout
les Matins du Monde.”
QUALIFYING ANECDOTE: He hid under his mentor Sainte-Colombe’s
special practice treehouse in order to steal his bowing moves. The little
sneak.
SUGGESTED LISTENING:
Sonnerie de St-Genevieve du Mont-de-Paris
Suite from “Alcyone”
Le Labyrinthe
Francois Couperin (1668-1733)
Called Couperin le Grand to distinguish him from his musical
relatives. It’s unknown whether this bothered them tremendously. An adventurous
keyboardist who fused French and Italian styles and who vastly extended the
expressive quality of the harpsichord. His work inspired Bach, Brahms, Richard
Strauss, and Ravel.
QUALIFYING ANECDOTE: To sell some of his early sonatas, he
packaged them under a fake Italian name – Italian composition was all the rage
and a French composer of the time couldn’t get arrested. They were wildly
successful.
SUGGESTED LISTENING:
Pieces de clavecin
Two Mass settings for organ
Motets
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
For some reason, most classical music lovers refer to the
“three B’s” – Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. What about Berlioz? He was the first
French Romantic. He invented modern orchestration (his ideal orchestra was 467
strong and included 30 pianos, 30 harps, and 12 cymbals); he was a masterful
conductor; incredibly literate, a devotee of Virgil, Goethe, and Shakespeare, his
criticism and memoirs are still instructive and enjoyable.
But somehow he squeezed “Symphonie Fantastique,” “Harold en
Italie,” the song cycle “Les nuits d’ete,” “Messe solennelle,” “L’enfance du
Christ,” “La damnation de Faust,” and the magnificent grand opera “Les Troyens”
– the last so grand that it wasn’t performed uncut until 147 after its
composition.
QUALIFYING ANECDOTE: Always falling in love, he basically
stalked his first wife, actress Harriet Smithson, for years until she gave in.
It didn’t work out. He planned to murder a fiancée that rejected him. Five
years before he died, he wrote: “My contempt for
the folly and baseness of mankind, my hatred of its atrocious cruelty, have
never been so intense. And I say hourly to Death: ‘When you will.’ Why does he
delay?” Not a happy guy.
SUGGESTED LISTENING:
Les Troyens
Symphonie Fantastique
Requiem
Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)
The funniest of all classical composers, Offenbach could
mock anything and get away with it. He composed more than 100 comic works; his
final work, “Les contes d’Hoffman,” was decidedly serious but still delightful.
SUGGESTED LISTENING:
Orphee aux enfers
Le belle Helene
Les contes d’Hoffman
Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
“Carmen.” That’s all you need to know. The birth of real
passion and verismo in opera with an unforgettable and complex central figure.
SUGGESTED LISTENING:
Carmen
Jeux d’enfants
Symphony in C
Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)
Although he is better-known for his somewhat fluffy
“Requiem” and “Pelleas et Melisande,” his piano pieces are fascinating, as are
his songs, and chamber pieces. His work is clear, unified, as graceful as
falling water. He was a marvel at the organ, but despised it, and left behind
no compositions for it.
QUALIFYING ANECDOTE: He lost a job at a regional church as
its organist when he showed up to play for Sunday mass still in his evening
clothes from the night before, having never gone to bed.
SUGGESTED LISTENING:
Chanson d’Eve
Piano Trio
Works for solo piano
Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
“For better or worse Claude Debussy must be seen as perhaps
the most influential figure in twentieth-century music.” – David Mason Greene.
His ears, perched on his bumpy oversized head could hear what others could not,
and got it down on paper.
QUALIFYING ANECDOTES: He was, according to Mary Garden, who
originated the role of Melisande in “Pelias et Melisande,” a “very, very
strange person.” His funeral procession moved through the abandoned streets of
Paris during a German bombardment of World War I. He was played, oddly enough,
by Oliver Reed in Ken Russell’s fanciful documentary “The Debussy Film.” His
wife had previously been Faure’s mistress.
SUGGESTED LISTENING:
Images for orchestra
Etudes for piano
La Mer
Erik Satie (1866-1925)
A free spirit, he is still ahead of his time. His work,
embossed with absurd titles such as “Cold Dreaming,” “Four Flabby Preludes,”
and “Desiccated Embryos” was alternately brilliant deconstructions of staid
musical forms, and new, unbound work that didn’t obey harmony, rhythmic
pattern, or any other musical norm. Ravishingly beautiful.
QUALIFYING ANECDOTES: He purchased 12 identical gray
corduroy suits, and simply rotated through them day after day. He made sketches
of imaginary buildings and kept them in a filing cabinet. Some of his best
compositions were found and published after his death – they had fallen behind
the back of his piano and Darius Milhaud found them there after Satie’s death.
SUGGESTED LISTENING:
Works for piano
Socrate
Parade
Joseph Canteloube (1879-1957)
Like many of the nationalist composers of his time – Bartok,
Janacek, Kodaly, Dvorak, and Smetana – Canteloube was a much a musicologist as
a composer, traveling and researching regional, vernacular music with vigor.
His “Songs from the Auvergne” took nearly 30 years to compile and complete.
SUGGESTED LISTENING:
Chants d’Auvergne
Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979)
One of the most knowledgeable, conductors, and teachers in
history, Boulanger was an incredibly gifted interpreter of music. She trained,
among others, Copland, Glass, Gardiner, Quincy Jones, Carter, Barenboim, and
Piazzola. In her own right, her delicate songs and chamber pieces are wonderful
– and unjustly overlooked.
SUGGESTED LISTENING:
Songs
3 Pieces for Cello and Piano
Fantasy for piano and orchestra
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
Absolutely true to himself, Poulenc could write both the
most absurd and transgressive works (“Les mamelles de Tiresias,” in English
“The Tits of Tiresias,” after Apollinaire, whom Poulenc met shortly before the
latter’s war-wound-related death) and the most movingly spiritual (“The
Dialogues of the Carmelites,” “Litanies a la vierge noire”). “I wanted music to
be clear, healthy, and robust,” he wrote.
SUGGESTED LISTENING:
The Dialogues of the Carmelites
Les mamelles de Tiresias
Songs
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Still far ahead of us. His slippery, spiky, otherworldly
journeys can drive you mad, but if you sit down and push through them, the
listening will reward you. He could and did absorb Western and non-Western
styles; like a sculptor, he subordinated the elements he needed and used them
to create a singular voice. He was a masterful organist. His study of birds led
to many of his most striking compositions, such as “Oiseaux Exotiques” and
“Catalogue d’oiseaux.” He was imbued with a profound sense of God, and this
intense spirituality permeated his meditations, such as his “Concert for the
End of Time,” his nature studies such as “From the Canyon to the Stars,” and
opera and oratorio such as his epic “Saint Francoise d’Assise.” He said, “I
want to write music that is an act of faith, a music that is about everything without
ceasing to be about God.”
SUGGESTED LISTENING:
Catalogue d’oiseaux
Des Canyons aux etoiles . . .
Saint-Francois d’Assise
