French Music

[JimL]

Be that as it may, the more important information is the tempo indication.  One doesn't have to know that it is a finale by being told.  We can figure it out from where it is.

[eschiss1]

(usually. apparently some people are, I gather, in doubt as to whether some Schubert last movements even of early works - e.g. piano sonatas  - for example; and perhaps Szymanowski's first quartet too; - were intended to be finales... but yes, the point holds. )

[eschiss1]

Belatedly on Loucheur, there's this information on his symphonies @ Wikipedia -
3 symphonies : n° 1 (1929-1933 ; 1re exécution complète aux Concerts Colonne le 15 décembre 1936 ; révisée en 1969) – n° 2 (1944 ; Paris, 15 février 1945), n° 3 (1971 ; Paris, 17 octobre 1972)
and also an article by René Dumesnil on the 2nd symphony in Le Monde, March 4 and 5 1945, is referred to. If a microfiche of this article is at the library, maybe it has movement indications or other information that may be useful to fill out one's knowledge? (Also, the 2nd symphony was published by Salabert in 1958- hopefully someone can track down a copy of the score somewhere. ) (All 3 of his symphonies are listed in Durand/Salabert/Eschig's- Salabert specifically- back-catalog. Hrm. And a cello concerto, and other works...)

[eschiss1]

JimL- Of course sometimes all that tempo indication at the heading of the first page of the finale is, is e.g. Quarter note=46. (Finale of Sorabji's Jami Symphony.)

[legrou]

britishcomposer, merci!

[Latvian]

Louis Vierne -  Symphonie en la & Spleens et détresses.

Elroel, thanks for sharing this wonderful recording. I've treasured my copy of this LP for years and continue to enjoy the music very much. Personally, I prefer Vierne's symphony to Dukas' stylistically similar and more widely-played one, though I like the Dukas just fine as well.

[eschiss1]

I made a copy of the CD recording of the Vierne symphony for my own use when it was on the radio once but look forward of course to listening to the Tzipine. I am a little confused by something about the work itself though it's hardly unprecedented- it's his opus 24 but seems only to have been published posthumously? ...
Agreed- thanks!!

[jowcol]

Hi everybody,

The Index to French Music is renewed.
I think this is the easier way to view.
There is a remark about the date and time of the latest update.

Elroel

Elroel-- Thanks for all of your hard work and recent posts.

I am wondering about Alexandre Tansman-- you have him listed as French. (With good reason.) We have another work of his posted in the Polish section, where he was born. (According to the Wikipedia Bio, he always referred to himself as a Polish composer, even though he spoke French at home.  He also spent time in the US.

Short Question-- Where do I put a Tansman work I'm ripping?

More philosophical QuestioN:

I'm wondering if it would help us to use the Tagging feature in Simple Machines to show more than one nationality, and enable searches  by tagged fields.   This way, you could launch a search for all "French Composers" and it would return people like Tansman with more than one nationality.  It would also remove the need to maintain indexes by hand, and we could also apply tags for period, type , etc.  So you could say "Show me all chamber works b y  early 20th century German Composers"   It would also require a poster to provide more info, but I THINK we can have a form for postings.

That sounds great, but retagging all of the existing  postings would be a lot of work-- and We'd likely want to make sure that the feature works as they say  on a small set before doing a major retagging effort.


Something to ponder...

[JimL]

I'm curious about the first movement of the Vierne.  I have the performance on YouTube, and according to that, the first movement is Grave - Allegro con molto, which makes absolutely no sense to me (Allegro with much what?)  I thought it might be Allegro con MOTO (with motion) or Allegro molto, or Allegro con molto something.  Is it just Allegro molto, and Omar made an error on his YouTube notes?  BTW, you can get the tempo for the Scherzo there.

[Alan Howe]

The tempo indications for the first movement are: Grave; Allegro molto

[JimL]

Guess I'll have to post a comment to Omar on that YouTube.

[TerraEpon]

Thanks for the Saint-Saens though for some reason the volume is REALLY low. A pass through Audacity fixes it up though, and it sounds good...

[JimL]

Are there any new leads on the movements of the Gouvy Symphony #4?  Now that I can split it, I'd like to have them.

[eschiss1]

hrm. not yet, but I wonder...
Published by Richault in the 1850s; anyone here who's also interested have access to UCLA (Los Angeles) library? (There are also copies of the score in one form or another at British Library St. Pancras and Bavarian State Lib.)

[JimL]

I just downloaded the Gounod concerto for piano-pedalier.  What a riot!  I was wondering if anybody can get the tempo indication for the 2nd movement scherzo.  I've sent a message to the pianist on his website, but haven't heard anything back yet.