César Franck and his younger brother Joseph, who also became a musician, were brought up by a father whose ambition was to breed two virtuosos at public expense through the educational system. The father, a clerk who was often unemployed, dreamed of his sons following in the footsteps of composer-virtuosos like Franz Liszt, Sigismund Thalberg and Ignaz Moschèles. César entered the Royal Conservatory in Liège at the age of eight, and was taken by his father on a tour of Flanders and to Aachen when he was only twelve. In 1835 the family moved to Paris, and there César became a private pupil of the Bohemian music-theorist and composer Anton Reicha (1770-1836), who had taught Liszt, Berlioz and Gounod. Franck's time with Reicha was short, but what he learned from the older man about counterpoint and fugal technique became his mainstay for the rest of his life. He was barred from enrolling at the Paris Conservatoire at first, because he was a foreigner (his mother was German, and his father came from the Belgian-German border). When he was admitted, in 1837, he amazed his teachers and won several awards, including first prize for fugue. But before he was able to enter for the last and most prestigious of all the available awards, the Prix de Rome, his father declared that it was time for César to start earning his living as a piano virtuoso, and in 1842 he took the family back to Belgium. Shortly afterwards, in Brussels, César Franck met Liszt, who expressed great interest in his piano trios, but the young composer had no success as a pianist. The disappointed father hauled the family back to Paris once again, where the two sons taught and put on concerts to support themselves and their parents. Finally the family broke up in 1848 when César married a pupil, Félicité Desmousseaux. He held a number of organ and teaching posts in Paris, but his compositions (secular and sacred works, symphonic poems, music for organ, piano and chamber forces) brought him only small success during his lifetime. In 1872 he took on the organ class at the Conservatoire, where he attracted several pupils who later distinguished themselves, becoming known as the bande à Franck. Among them was Vincent d'Indy, who in 1894, after Franck's death, founded the Schola Cantorum, dedicated to the bande à Franck's ideals for establishing a new seriousness in French music. The school not only trained composers but also revived the works of forgotten masters, including Monteverdi, Rameau, Bach and Gluck. In 1886 he was elected president of the Société Nationale de Musique, an organisation promoting new French works. This set off a highly unpleasant confrontation between Franck and his followers, on the one hand, and the chief founder of the society, the conservative, disillusioned Camille Saint-Saëns, on the other.

In 1890, César Franck was hit by a horse-omnibus and from then on his health was never good; he died on 8 November after a bout of pleurisy. His tomb in the Montparnasse cemetery is adorned with his portrait by the great sculptor Auguste Rodin. Franck occupied a key position in the development of French music and musical life in the last three decades of the 19th century. This was a period of tension created above all by two factors. One was the sense of national disgrace following defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), which prompted a retreat into an idea of an independent "Ars Gallica" (this lay behind the foundation in 1871, by Camille Saint-Saëns and others, of the Société Nationale de Musique); the other was a growing enthusiasm for the music of Wagner. Franck sought, in his compositions and his teaching, to breach the gap between these two forces, combining classical formal discipline with romantic emotional musical language.

Harvey Sachs

Biographical notes (c) 1996, reprinted by permission of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, HamburgA selection of major works: Orchestral: Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne, Le chasseur maudit, Les djinns, Symphony in D minor, Psyché, Variations symphoniques Chamber: Piano Quintet, String Quartet, Trios concertants (for piano trio), Violin Sonata, Prélude, fugue et variation (harmonium and piano), Instrumental solo: Ballade (piano), Chorales (organ), Cinq pièces (harmonium), Offertoires (organ), L'organiste volume 1 & 2 (harmonium or organ), Prélude, aria et final (piano), Prélude, choral et fugue (piano), Prélude, fugue et variation (organ) Vocal/Choral: Les Béatitudes, Mass, Panis angelicus, Psalm 150, Rédemption Stage works: Operas: Hulda