Franck’s Symphony in D Minor
Notes by TŌN horn player Felix Johnson
César Franck was a French Romantic composer, teacher, and organist born in Liège and later established in Paris. His Symphony in D Minor, perhaps his best known orchestral work, was started in 1887 and premiered by the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra in February of 1889. It is the only symphony written by Franck in the prime of his compositional career. The piece is structured in a comparatively unique way, having only three movements as opposed to the more traditional four. These three movements are almost cyclically focused on thematic material introduced in the first movement, with Franck returning continually to these opening measures, particularly in the coda of the Finale.
In the musically conservative and nationalistic environment of late-19th century Paris, Franck’s symphony was met with a rather divided reception. Some critics appreciated the piece’s themes and orchestration, while others, particularly Franck’s contemporary Charles Gounod, found it overbearing and overly insistent. Despite this, the symphony quickly became popular outside of Paris, and within the following decades became a definitive standard throughout the concert halls of Europe and the United States. Today, Franck’s Symphony in D Minor has fallen in popularity. In an article titled “What Happened to One of Classical Music’s Most Popular Pieces?” the journalist David Allen shows that in recent decades the Symphony has become a relative rarity. I find this to be quite a shame as the piece fits very nicely on an orchestral program and has some truly beautiful material. I encourage particular attention to the eerie opening of the second movement, in the strings and harp, where the English horn gives way to a gorgeous melody shared between the clarinet and French horn. In its totality, Franck’s Symphony in D Minor should be viewed as a standard of the late-Romantic period both because of its history and the merits of the composer’s writing.