Don’t forget Franck

Robin Holloway

Wednesday, 28th May 2008

Robin Holloway on César Franck

Between an astonishing early Piano Trio (in 1840 an isolated harbinger of things to come) and the works of the 1870s, lie deserts of copious mediocrity. Les Eolides (1876), with its unexpectedly delicious depiction of buffeting, scent-bearing breezes, retains appeal. But what of the oratorios? Rédemption is probably by now past redeeming. Here Franck for once completely fulfils the negative stereotype in a pious orgy of sanctimonious blandness. Awful words don’t matter when set to inspired music, but here they are entrusted, frequently and at length, to a speaker, their direness undisguised.

Are the Béatitudes just as lost a cause? The scheme is dangerously schematic: each of Christ’s eight pronouncements (‘Blessed be the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy’, etc.) is illustrated in scena or sermonette or both, then concludes with Vox Christi uttering the sacred words surrounded by an oleaginous halo. Towards the end Satan emerges as counter-protagonist. Having done his damnedest, energetically supported by his infernal cohorts in four-square choruses straight from the pantomime, his voice alternates, then combines, with Jesus’ in an ultimate struggle betwixt darkness and light, bizarrely homoerotic in feel and sonority, before he is vanquished, leaving the way clear for celestial alleluias to fill the empyrean till the end of time.

The text is fustian in excelsis (and its English, in my old copy, reaches unearthly realms of badness beyond the skill of the most devoted parodist). Yet...the felicity, the radiance, the sheer beauty of the composing transcends this sorry stuff and elevates it to the same level, as music ever has and ever will transform duff conceptions and naff words: the heights are conquered and possessed by its sheer innate power of being. Lovers of Elgar’s late oratorios should love Les Béatitudes too (how about it, Three Choirs Festival?). Gerontius, uneven masterpiece set to another text of dubious worth, makes a closer comparison still. Franck’s diabolic chorus is barely more absurd than Elgar’s; his celestial serenity a good deal more convincing.

But of course it is in their purely instrumental works that both composers attain a quality uncompromised by their religious convictions. By these — a mighty handful in both cases — they are second only to the very greatest. And if you are still put off by Franck’s glutiny, try Psyché. Already in the Eolides and the Djinns (another lovely piece, totally neglected, from the best period), he’d essayed this vein of exotic/oriental luxury with success. In Psyché the eroticism of the pagan tale is imbued with the frank sensuality of the instrumental works and the rapt fervour of the Christian. Psyché abducted by Zephyrs, the Garden of Eros, the joyous reconciliation of the lovers at the end, will surprise and delight listeners who can’t stand the Symphony or the Quintet.