Cesar Franck - Symphony in D Minor

CÉSAR FRANCK
Born Liége, Belgium, 10 December 1822. Died Paris, 8 November 1890.
SYMPHONY IN D MINOR
Composed in 1886-88 and first performed at the Paris Conservatoire on February 17, 1889. The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, bass clarinet, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets-s-piston, 3 trombones, tuba, 3 timpani, harp and strings. The work lasts approximately 37 minutes.

César Franck begins his Symphony in D Minor with a single germinal motif out of which the entire composition seems to grow. The three-note motif, with its mysterious, unresolved character, is the same melodic phrase which had intrigued composers before him. Beethoven used it in one of his late string quartets (Op. 135), and wrote into the score above it the question, "Must it be?" Wagner incorporated it in his Ring cycle as the questioning theme of fate, and Liszt made it the central theme of his tone poem, Les Préludes. Each of these composers, in his own way, was fascinated by the unresolved, enigmatic character of the motif.

Franck's first movement alternates between a slow, brooding treatment of this motif and a faster, more agitated development of it. The mood of the movement combines an almost religious sense of mystery with fervor and even joyous good humor.

The second movement unconventionally combines into one movement the second and third movements of a conventional symphony. Franck's second movement is both a slow songful movement, opening with harp and pizzicato strings joined by a melancholy English horn, and it is a playful scherzo, as we soon hear in the middle section string melody.

The third movement, the finale, recalls the English horn melody from the second movement and both the passionate and the questioning treatment of the motif from the first movement, and the symphony climaxes with a sense of joyous triumph.