César Franck’s career was a remarkable one. A Belgian by birth (although Liege, the city of his birth, was then in the Netherlands), Franck’s father moved the family to allow the young César to enter the Paris Conservatoire at the age of sixteen. After leaving the Conservatoire in 1842, Franck returned to Liege for a short time before returning to Paris, where he held organ positions at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette and Saint-Jean-Saint-François-au-Marais before his appointment as choir master (1858) and later titulaire (1860) at the newly-constructed Basilica of St Clothilde. In 1872, Franck was appointed professor of organ at the Paris Conservatoire, where his students included Vincent d’Indy and Louis Vierne.
Many readers here will be familiar with Franck’s major organ works, the three Chorales (1892), and the collections of Six Pieces (1860-62) and Trois Pieces (1878). These are important works in the organ literature, and reflect Franck’s important stature as an improviser, and the symbiotic relationship of his music to the instruments on which he conceived the pieces. And no organist can escape Panis Angelicus, a veritable warhorse for choirs, and a mainstay of practically any occasion in Catholic worship.
The collection of pieces in L’Organiste represents a different strand of Franck’s composition activities. These answered a need for simple, short pieces that could be used in the Mass where the organist was either untrained – or unable – to improvise. Because of the successive waves of destruction, desecration and (eventually) final disestablishment of the Catholic Church in France flowing from the revolutions, outside the major cities most parish churches were equipped with harmoniums rather than grands orgues.
The collection is divided up into short suites of seven movements, based on common keys. The seventh piece in each suite is an Offertoire, which leads me to look upon these suites as an aid to the alternatim practices of plainchant performance that were still prevalent in France until the end of the nineteenth century. Each suite includes an “Amen” setting, which would have served as a couplet for the final dismissal at the end of Mass, or as the final interlude in a set of pieces for performance in alternation with the choir. These might be useful for an extremely short interlude, but I doubt whether there’s any liturgical action that takes under 15 seconds to perform that would be worth covering with music. Perhaps you might use these as a signal for the ending of the greeting of peace (why does it seem to take so long?) and to flag that you’re about to play the next hymn. It might be an improvement on the perpetual ritual announcement from the parson – “Now, our next hymn is, um...”
Franck’s pieces in L’Organiste seldom exceed two pages, the Offertoires being an honourable exception. Many are quite short, being a single page or slightly more. The technical standard is not exacting, but some pieces will demand more practice than others.
Some of the pieces have titles which point to their seasonal application, such as a few Noels. Many of the Offertoires could be used as postludes: some of these indicate in the title that they are Offertoire ou Sortie. Most of the shorter pieces could be grouped as pairs, making a kind of A-B-A structure if you want to make a longer service prelude.
While the collection was conceived for the harmonium, this need not be a restriction on how to register the pieces. Because dynamics are marked in, it will be useful to have two manuals, with the opportunity to shape phrases using the swell pedal. The player will be free to decide whether to have manual changes or not, and whether to use the pedal to provide extra gravitas to these little gems of ARS GALLICA.
This is a useful resource for these pieces is which contains midi-based recordings of the whole collection.
The score is available here.
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