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In honor of Bastille day, my favorite French musicians.
Pérotin was largely just an entry in music history books – composer of “the earliest known examples of western European music written in four parts” (Paul Hillier) until 1957, when a young label dedicated to early music (paradoxically named Experiences Anonymes) released an LP dedicated to Pérotin and his predecessor Léonin. (One wonders whether Steve Reich heard it; he has referenced the influence on him of Pérotin’s style.) Of more recent vintage is the 1989 ECM CD Pérotin, with an assortment of organum and conductus sung by the Hilliard Ensemble conducted by Paul Hillier.
The most famous 15th century European composer, Dufay was born near Brussels but grew up in Cambrai and was trained at its famous cathedral. His Mass “L’homme armé” (The Armed Man) was his longest work in the form and gets its title because its thematic basis is an extremely popular ditty of the time (some speculate that Dufay himself wrote the song). On this recording by the Hilliard Ensemble (EMI Classics, 1987) it is followed by five isorhythmic motets also by Dufay but of earlier vintage. He was not an innovator, mostly sticking to earlier stylistic techniques, but he brought them to perfection.
Born in Belgium, Franck moved to Paris at 15 and became the leader of a resurgence of French instrumental music, as teacher of several generations of French composers and through example – though he was not even remotely prolific, each major work was a masterpiece. A 1969 LP on Erato paired his two main symphonic works, his Symphony in D minor and his Symphonic Variations, in performances by the French National Radio Orchestra conducted by Jean Martinon, with Philippe Entremont the pianist in the variations; a 1984 recording of his solo piano Prelude, Choral & Fugue by Pascal Devoyon fills out the CD. These are three of his four most famous compositions (the fourth being his Sonata for Violin and Piano), all written in 1884-86!
Saint-Saëns was child prodigy who started piano at age two and supposedly had memorized all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas by ten; later, Liszt called him the greatest organist in the world. The French organ tradition is unique (more on that later), and features in the most famous of his pieces that doesn’t involve imitating animals. His majestic Symphony No. 3 in C minor gives the instrument its most prominent role in any orchestral symphony. (His five Piano Concertos are also superb; for a quintessentially French take on them, get EMI’s mid-1950s set with Jeanne-Marie Darré as the soloist.)
The best recording of Saint-Saëns’s “Organ” Symphony is a famed 1959 RCA Living Stereo from the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Charles Munch, with organist Berj Zamkochian. The CD containing it also features Poulenc’s 1938 Concerto for Organ, an equally dramatic but much more modern work that mixes archaic Baroque gestures and highly dissonant chords. (Franck’s tone poem “Le Chasseur Maudit” fills out the disc.)
A student of Franck, Debussy brought French music kicking and screaming into the modern world with modal, whole-tone, and pentatonic scales and a new sense of harmony using unprepared modulations and dissonance without resolution. He hated having his music called Impressionism, but it’s the epitome of the style. His influence ranged far beyond France and even classical music to such jazz musicians as Duke Ellington and Bill Evans. Deutsche Grammophon’s Debussy entry in its Panorama series of two-CD compilations (which usually have some weak links) is unusually strong, in fact impeccable:
La Mer: Berlin Philharmonic/Herbert von Karajan
“Prélude à l’aprèsmidi d’un faune”: Boston Symphony Orchestra/Michael Tilson Thomas
Nocturnes: Boston Symphony Orchestra/Claudio Abbado
String Quartet: Melos Quartet
Cello Sonata: Mstislav Rostropovich/Benjamin Britten
Preludes for Piano, Book I: Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli
Estampes: Sviatoslav Richter
“Syrinx”: Doriot Anthony Dwyer
Ravel has some techniques in common with Debussy but is very much his own man, distinctive stylistically and sometimes seeming the tidy Apollo to the older composer’s Dionysus. That said, Ravel absorbed a jazz influence and is far from dry – just listen to his witty G major Piano Concert. One of the most mysterious orchestral openings in the concerto literature leads into a spectacular explosion of piano in the single-movement Concerto in D major for the Left Hand, written for Paul Wittgenstein (brother of philosopher Ludwig), who lost his right hand in World War I; without being told, most listeners wouldn’t guess the piano part is for one hand. Aldo Ciccolini’s flavorful 1975 recordings with the Orchestre de Paris conducted by Jean Martinon (sometimes also including Debussy’s Fantaisie for Piano & Orchestra) occasionally pops back into print, usually overseas, and is so atmospheric that it’s worth searching for.
The first person on this list that I saw in public performance, and boy was it memorable. Back to the French organ tradition: its sound is bright and sparkling, its harmonies dazzlingly rich, and it’s the last classical “school” to make improvisation of supreme importance. In the mid-’70s my organ teacher drove me into Manhattan one Sunday afternoon to hear this blind virtuoso give a recital at a church, and it blew my teenage mind. I had never heard a classical musician improvise more than a brief cadenza in a concerto, whereas Langlais improvised entire pieces starting from only a suggested theme (usually a Gregorian chant tune) for each one. An album with the simple title Langlais Improvises (Motette M10371) can be purchased on the website of the Organ Historical Society, as can many other hard-to-find Langlais recordings as well as the 12-volume set of his complete organ works played by his student Ann Labounsky.
In May 1940 Messiaen was captured at Verdun and subsequently held at a prisoner-of-war camp at Görlitz until his release in May 1941. While confined, he wrote the most spiritually compelling piece of chamber music in the repertoire, Quartet for the End of Time, for violin, clarinet, cello, and piano, and then premiered it there in the camp. The piece really does seem to end time. It’s mind-bogglingly stupid that Messiaen’s own recording has long been unavailable (I have it on a Musidisc LP; I don’t think it’s even been on CD). Nonetheless, by far the best ever is the fabulous 1975 RCA recording by the group Tashi (pianist Peter Serkin, clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, violinist Ida Kavafian, and cellist Fred Sherry), easily found. (I saw Messiaen in person too, in the mid-’80s at Carnegie Hall for the premiere of sections of his opera St. Francis of Assisi, when the elderly composer came onstage at the end for a rousing and loving ovation.) You should also hear the massive, ecstatic Turangalîla Symphony; until EMI Classics gets around to reissuing Andre Previn’s version, Naxos’ budget-priced two-CD set with the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antoni Wit (also including L’ascension, which used to be Messiaen’s most popular work) will do just fine.
Though any jazz artist has to absorb some American influence, Solal has done so while retaining true Gallic flavor, like a puckish cross between Poulenc and Thelonious Monk. Balade du 10 Mars (Soul Note, 1998), a trio recording with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Paul Motian, mixes standards and jazz favorites (including Monk’s “Round Midnight”) with a few scintillating originals. Solal comes to New York somewhat regularly (he was here right after 9/11 and made the fine Blue Note album NY1) and attracts an impressive list of guests sitting in (when I saw him, Dave Douglas and Roswell Rudd), so try to catch him when he’s on our side of the Atlantic.
The best-known electric violinist became famous with Frank Zappa (notably on Hot Rats and then made a series of impressive jazz-fusion albums for Atlantic in the 1970s. Enigmatic Ocean (1977) is particularly hot, with guitarists Allan Holdsworth and Daryle Stuermer, bassist Ralphe Armstrong, keyboardist Allan Zavod, and drummer Steve Smith mixing fire, energy, and precision on memorable compositions given fiery performances that still thrill thirty years later, long after the genre’s heyday.
