César Franck - Prelude, Chorale and Fugue

Composer: César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck (10 December 1822 -- 8 November 1890)
Performer: Alfred Cortot
Year of recording: 1929 (remastered)

Prélude, Choral et Fugue [Prelude, Chorale and Fugue] for piano, M. 21, written in 1884.

Not until the spring of 1884 did Franck come to grips, in an era contentiously preoccupied with Wagner and just beginning to appreciate Beethoven's later works, with the task of reviving the forms which had moved Bach. Accordingly, a searchingly ruminative prélude and the swiftly running fugue -- beginning with angst-laden drama to conclude in triumphantly incandescent peals -- were composed together. Only then did the lack of something expressively and architecturally linking become apparent, prompting the composition of the great harped chorale, resounding across the keyboard and requiring the left hand to reach over into the treble to chime the theme. The upshot is an elaborately figured, chromatically inflected, and texturally rich essay in which doubt and faith, darkness and light, oscillate until a final ecstatic resolution. Mlle Poitevin, to whom the Prélude, Choral et Fugue is dedicated, gave the work its premiere at the Salle Pleyel, under the auspices of the Société National de Musique on 24 January 1885. It was published in the same year by Enoch.

The interconnectedness and thematic relationships (particularly the cyclic recall of the prelude and chorale in the fugue) make this an unorthodox example of double-function form. It uses a Chromatic fourth motif in the Chorale and the Fugue, and the work itself is an exemplar of Franck's distinctive use of cyclic form.