César Franck Violin Concerto!

[Alan Howe]

We have a download of the Marteau VC here:
http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,1543.msg38196.html#msg38196
It's a monster of a piece!

[minacciosa]

French violin concertos are in rather short supply once you leave the classical period. Great ones include Jean Martinon, Serge Nigg, and Joseph Jongen (though he was Belgian). Concerted violin pieces by the French are more plentiful.

[mjkFendrich]

We have a download of the Marteau VC here:
http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,1543.msg38196.html#msg38196
It's a monster of a piece!

... but it would really need a new modern recording with a better soloist. That would be a great task
for winners of the Marteau competition (and could then be released by cpo years later :-).

[matesic]

I'm very grateful for the upload and the prompt, although it makes for a mixed listening experience! The Marteau VC certainly is an epic work calling for epic playing, which I think it gets from Garay. You might think that by this time (1919) Marteau possibly doesn't qualify as a "French" composer, having first become stranded on the wrong side of the trenches and then moved to Sweden, but maybe you can still detect his roots in Franck and Chausson?

[eschiss1]

I think we have a broadcast of the Marteau concerto (uploaded 22 July 2012), but it would be good if there were a more generally-available recording...

[Alan Howe]

I already made that point, Eric...

[JimL]

I believe I read somewhere that Jules Massenet composed a violin concerto for Marteau.  Is there any evidence of this other than that excerpt?

[TerraEpon]

I don't even have that listed at all as existing or lost or anything like that. First I've heard of it.

[Alan Howe]

We've been here before - back in August 2010, when tcutler wrote:

It reminds me of a passage from either the Emery or Toskey violin encyclopedias in which it claims Massenet wrote a violin concerto. Tantalizing, but unfortunately untrue. Massenet planned to write a violin concerto, but it never ended up happening.

Let's not go over this old ground again. In fact, back to the Franck, please...

[Revilod]

One concerto which fits the criteria is Jaques-Dalcroze's First....a long-winded work but one with many fine passages (1902). There's an excellent recording on Guild. (The Second Concerto is not traditionally constructed.)

Concertos were out of fashion in France around the turn of the century to the extent that there were riots at the Concerts Colonne in 1904. "Supporters of the new, operatic aesthetic attended every concert, interrupting any concertos or similar works with whistles and catcalls. This boycott proved fatal for many works as managers became reluctant to programme new concertos for fear of further disruption. Among the casualties were piano concertos by Widor and Massenet, which were rarely performed again." (Hyperion's Pierne disc booklet.)

Does anyone know more about quite why the concerto form was boycotted? I imagine it was regarded as having its roots in German music and so was unacceptable after France's humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian war.

[jdperdrix]

One concerto which fits the criteria is Jaques-Dalcroze's First

Émile Jaques-Dalcroze was not French, but Swiss. He studied in Paris, but he spent all his carrier in Geneva... That's why I did not mention his works...

[matesic]

Thanks Revilod - it's not often that this kind of question gets a plausible answer! In France the piano concerto doesn't seem to have gone so far out of fashion as string concertos (and the symphony?) but I guess the general trend might be seen as reflecting the growth of a lighter French nationalistic style and a rejection of things portentously German.

[Revilod]

Thanks for picking me up on my blunder concerning Jaques-Dalcroze, jdperdrix.

As I understand it, immediately after the Franco-Prussian war a belief endured that French musical culture had been debased and trivialised. Operetta had become all the rage.  Now, after the war, there was a greater interest in abstract music.  Many years later Faure said that he would never have dreamt of composing a quartet or a sonata before 1870. Ironically, then, in an attempt to give French music greater weight, French composers began to produce more works which employed German forms and techniques. There are a number of French concertos from this period but many are too derivative to have endured.

Charpentier's opera "Louise" was an enormous success in 1900 because it was truly French in theme, content and style. German forms such as the concerto were now out of favour again.  Hence the 1904 riots.

Is this a fair summary?

[matesic]

Very fair I'm sure, but we're still stuck with the question why major French composers seem to have abandoned the violin concerto as early as 1880! Maybe the genre was considered too "Operettic"!

[Alan Howe]

Perhaps if think who the major French composers were in the period post-1880 we might come up with an answer.

Dare I kick the discussion off with towering figure of Debussy? And might I suggest that form was becoming less important than sound? Did impressionism tend that way? A vast over-simplification, I know, but maybe there's some truth in it...

And did the school of César Franck produce many VCs?