FLORENT SCHMITT (1870 - 1958)
The French composer Florent Schmitt belongs to the
legion of composers from the first half of the 20th century
whose music, while important in its day, has fallen into obscurity,
and is not well represented on disc. It is easy to point the finger
at the historical caution of commercial record companies, but Schmitt’s
demise in popularity extends back well into his own lifetime, and has
sociological and cultural roots. Like Strauss, Rachmaninoff, and so
many others, he refused to shed the skin of his particular musical tradition,
and suffered the aspersions of those who felt at the time that not joining
the ranks of the avant-garde was worthy of contempt. But Schmitt resists
easy classification - a fact that he would have enjoyed immensely. He
stoutly refused to acknowledge affinities between his music and other
composers, saying that was the job of pedants and analysts. Although
a traditionalist in many ways, he was hardly the reactionary that Stravinsky
and others stigmatized him as in later life, and his music often employed
surprisingly modern harmonic and rhythmic idioms. His reputation as
a conservative who "lived to see the times outgrow him" is
based on no stronger a premise than the fact that his music continued
to adhere to traditional formal moulds, and Romantic sources of subject
matter. A tinge of bitterness haunted his old age, acutely aware as
he was of this stigma, in spite of dogged efforts on his part in the
later works to continue to strive for new modes of expression.
Prior to 1920, Schmitt was considered to be in the
front rank of "advanced", non-conformist musical composers.
He was a member of the Club des Apaches in the early years of
the 20th century, which also included Ravel, Delage, Caplet,
Viñes, and the poet Klingsor. Schmitt was a strong influence
on Stravinsky during the latter’s Paris years. Le Sacre du printemps
owes a great deal to La Tragédie de Salomé, and
in 1912 Stravinsky wrote to Schmitt that his Salomé score was
"one of the greatest masterpieces of modern music" - an opinion
he was to reverse decades later.
His reputation as a composer has rested for some 75
years now upon two or three works: the choral/orchestral setting of
Psalm 47, the orchestral suite from La tragédie de Salomé,
and to a lesser extent the Quintet, Op.51, for piano and strings. These
works were created with broad brushstrokes, and their grandiosity has
not been to everyone’s taste, either at their premieres or today. The
monopoly on popularity that they enjoy amongst his works is a pity,
not because they are unworthy, but because they represent only one of
Schmitt’s several compositional idioms. While it is true that Schmitt
gained his greatest popular successes with these scores shortly after
their creation, there exist so many equally fine or greater scores than
these, known only to a small coterie of enthusiasts. His substantial
output of 137 opuses embraces all the genres of the time except opera.
Among the many finely-wrought orchestral scores, one could mention in
particular Oriane et le Prince d’Amour, Antoine et Cléopatre,
his Symphony #2, and the film score Salammbô. The Sonate
libre en deux parties enchaînées for violin and piano
is an astounding work that is fortunately finely represented on disc,
and evinces a similar harmonic and rhythmic complexity to that of the
Symphonie concertante for piano and orchestra. Both works are
highly recommended listening. His setting of Andersen’s Une semaine
du petit-elfe "Ferme l’Oeil" for piano 4-hands (later
a ballet score for orchestra) has some delightful moments, but you will
have to be lucky enough to find the 1958 Columbia LP with Robert and
Gaby Casadesus, because it hasn’t been recorded since.
A fine pianist in his own right, Schmitt wrote prolifically
and wonderfully idiomatically for the instrument. There are 162 compositions
for solo piano, and his 88 pieces for piano duet place him in the front
rank of 20th-century composers in that medium. Almost none
of the piano works is presently available on disc - a lamentable fact
that the present writer/pianist hopes to redress in the near future
with an intégrale of the piano music. A fine, virtuosic
rendition of the three Rapsodies for two pianos is available,
however. The CDs of his piano music by Pascal Le Corré, Alain
Raes, Annie d’Arco, and others have been long deleted, but Werner Bärtschi’s
1982 recording of the three pieces that constitute Ombres, Op.60,
has recently been reissued, as has John Ogdon’s 1972 recording of Deux
mirages, Op.70. In the former you will discover perhaps Schmitt’s
finest writing for the keyboard, worthy of his long-time friend Ravel,
and very similar in style.
Schmitt was a sophisticated composer, able to "jump
tracks" stylistically and create convincing works of art in different
styles. The early Soirs, Op.5 are representative of an emerging
personal style based upon the heritage provided by his teachers Massenet
and Fauré, intermingled with influences from younger sources
such as Delius, whom he befriended while competing for the Prix de Rome.
(He made an arrangement of parts of Delius’s opera Irmelin for
piano.) The Reflets d’Allemagne, Op.28, the Feuillets de voyage,
Op.26, and the Trois valses nocturnes, Op.31, are delightful
models of the fashionable salon style of Moszkowski and Chabrier, choc-à-bloc
with delightful and unexpected turns of phrase, and "doing the
genre one better" at its own game. There exists no more adept a
facsimile of Schumann’s style than Retour à l’endroit familier
from the Feuillets de voyage. In another vein, pieces such as
Glas (from Musiques intimes, Op.29), Feuilles mortes
(from Quatre pièces, Op.46) and Sur un vieux petit
cimetière (from Crépuscules, Op.56) show a
strong desire for Impressionist exploration. Ravel once stated just
after the turn of the century that he had convinced himself that it
was impossible to write convincingly for the piano any more, until he
heard Schmitt’s Lucioles, Op.23/2 - and wrote his own Jeux
d’eau as a direct result.
Much has been made of the supposedly Germanic complexity
of the musical texture of some of his scores. This, combined with the
Germanic origin of his Alsatian surname, easily misleads one into assuming
that he was somehow "un-French", like Delius or Holst are
ostensibly "un-English". Nothing could be further from the
truth. Schmitt’s music is quintessentially Gallic in spirit. He was
by nature passionate yet controlled, and did nothing in half measure
if he believed in it strongly. In 1914 he was enlisted into military
service, and went to the front line at his own request. As a person,
he was by accounts quick-witted, amiable with some and abrupt with others,
and caustic upon occasion, both verbally and in print. He enjoyed his
powerful position as grand-high-arbiter-of-taste during the years when
he wrote regular reviews for Le Temps (1929-39), as much as he
enjoyed creating scandal at live concerts by shouting controversial
jibes from the loges. These bursts of élan were always
sparked by his sense, usually at premieres of new works, that the audience
was "missing the point", and he would as readily champion
aurally daunting avant-garde works as he would decry the popular. The
most noteworthy incident occurred in 1933, when songs of Kurt Weill
were being performed at the Salle Pleyel. Schmitt’s scandalous shouts
from the audience exposed an anti-Semitic arrogance that resulted in
a newspaper scandal, with words of support from Weingartner, and condemnation
from just about everyone else, including the publisher Heugel, who called
him an "irresponsible lunatic".
Of Schmitt’s 138 numbered opuses, roughly 1/3 have
appeared on recording at one time or another. About 35 separate works
are presently available, almost all of which are represented in the
following list of recommended recordings. A very few works, such as
La Tragédie de Salomé, Dionysiaques, and the Lied
et scherzo, are presently available on more than one recording,
in which case only one has been chosen for inclusion. The absence of
a recording from this list is a result of the writer’s unfamiliarity
with it, and should not be construed as a negative recommendation.
© Leslie De'Ath
RECOMMENDED RECORDINGS
Orchestral and concertante works -
La Tragédie
de Salomé, Op.50 (complete
version, 1907)
Marco
Polo 8.223448 Rheinland-Pfalz Philharmonic, cond. Patrick Davin
La Tragédie de Salomé,
Op.50 (ballet suite)
Mercury Living Presence 434336-2 "Dances of Death"
(reissue of 1958 recording)
Detroit SO, cond. Paul Paray (with works by Liszt,
Weber, Saint-Saëns & R.Strauss)
Antoine et Cléopatre, Op.69
Cybelia CY842 Rheinland-Pfalz Philharmonic
Salammbô, Op.76
(film score)
BMG (RCA Red Seal) 74321 733 952 Orchestre National
d’Ile de France, cond. Jacques Mercier
Symphonie concertante, Op.82, for orchestra
and piano
Valois V 4587 Huseyin Sermet, pf / Orchestre Philharmonique
de Monte-Carlo, cond. David Robertson- with Schmitt’s Rêves,
Op.65; Soirs, Op.5 (arr. orch.)
Symphony #2, Op.137 Marco Polo 8.223689, or
Patrimoine/Naxos 8.550636
Orchestre Philharmonique de Rhénanie-Palatinat,
cond. Leif Segerstam - with Schmitt’s Danse d’Abisag, Op.75 Habeyssée,
Op.110 Rêves, Op.65
Chamber works -
Quintette, Op.51, for piano and strings
Accord 465 810-2 or ACD 220982 (reissue) Quatuor de
Berne / Werner Bärtschi, pf
Lied et Scherzo, Op.54
Praga Digitals PRD
250 156 Prague Wind Quintet / Czech Nonet with Schmitt’s Suite
en rocaille, Op.84 A tour d’anches, Op.97 Chants alizés,
Op.125
Sonate libre en deux parties enchaînées,
Op.68
Valois V 4679 Régis Pasquier, vln / Huseyin
Sermet, pf
Accord 461 759-2 Jean Fournier, vln / Ginette Doyen,
pf
Hasards, Op.96 Régis Pasquier,
vln / Bruno Pasquier, vla / Roland Pidoux, vc / Haridas
Greif, pf
Valois V 4679
Suite, Op.133, for trumpet & piano Eric
Aubier, tpt
Pierre Verany 798011
Choral works -
En bonnes voix, Op.91
ATMA Classique ALCD 2 1023 Schmitt, Oeuvres chorales
Le Jeune Opéra du Québec / Les Chantres musiciens, cond.
Mariane Patenaude with Schmitt’s À contre-voix, Op.104
Six choeurs, Op.81 Trois trios, Op.99
Piano works -
Soirs, Op.5
Paradisum PDS-CD11 "French Miniatures" John
Clegg, pf (with works of Milhaud, Koechlin & Ibert) Ombres,
Op.64
Accord 461 759-2 (reissue) Werner Bärtschi, pf
with Schmitt’s Sonate libre en deux parties enchaînées,
Op.68
Mirages, Op.70/1-2
EMI 5 65996 2 (reissue) John Ogdon, pf (with sonatas
by Dutilleux & Dukas)
Feuillets de voyage, Op.26/1-5, for piano 4-hands
Four Hands Music FHMD 9674 "Moszkowski’s World, vol.4"Isabel Beyer/Harvey
Dagul, pf 4-hands
Trois rapsodies, Op.53, for 2 pianos
Valois V 4679 Huseyin Sermet / Kun Woo Paik
Other
Dionysiaques, Op.62, for military band
Caprice 21384 Stockholm Symphonic Wind Orch., cond.
David Porcelijn (with works by Stravinsky, Naumann & Dvorak)
Quatuor pour saxophones, Op.102
Simax 1123 Saxofon Concentus (with quartets by Singelee
& Gotkovsky)
Various combinations -
Erato (Ultima) 5873-85636-2 (2-CD reissue) Various artists
includes La Tragédie de Salomé, Op.50 (orch) Psaume
47, Op.38 (soli, chorus, orch) Janiana, Op.52 (orch) Suite
en rocaille, Op.84 (chamber) Lied et Scherzo, Op.54 (chamber)
© Leslie De'Ath
