Franck, Faure, and Grieg

Up until the late 1800's German composers dominated the musical world. It was around the mid 1800's that composers Cesar Franck (1822-1890), Gabriel Faure (1845-1924), and Edvard Grieg (1842-1907) were actively composing. This was a very interesting time in the compositional world. Many changes were being made as far as what techniques composers were following. Some were fighting to maintain the way of the past, such as Brahms and Schumann, while others, as Liszt, were causing radical changes in composition and the liberties that were acceptbale to take.

Franck was born in Belgium, close to the border of France. An important property to his music was the use of cyclical form. This can be heard in his Prelude Choral and Fugue, when the theme from the prelude returns in the fugue. His music followed a harmonic structure that was similar to Liszt and Wagner's style. His students claim that he would always tell them to modulate, showing how highly he valued modulatory material in his music. Some of this might to attributed to the fact that he was a very skilled organist.

Faure was probably the most famous french composer of his time. He, like Franck, was also an active organist. The most striking quality of his musical style is probably his harmonic language. His music will always move to unexpected places, yet always makes sense afterwards. The genre he is most known for is the art song. This ability to create such effective melodies can be heard in his 6th nocturne. If you were to take out the melody in this nocturne the harmony would not make much sense. This is because of his harmonic complexity and surprising arrivals. He uses the melody to create a work that makes sense to the listener.

Grieg was a norwegian composer. His music is much different from both Franck and Faure. His harmonies seem much simpler. His music encorporates folk tunes and styles. He is a very nationalistic composer and focuses on nature for many of his works. He wrote many smaller works for the piano, especially lyric pieces. He, liek Faure, was very good at writing melodies. Grieg kept them much more simple however. His melodies were often much more repetative, and didn't rely on such obscure harmonic progressions.