3 Chorals for Organ

Historical context

The three Chorales for organ were César Franck’s swan-song, composed in 1890 in the last months before his death. According to Vincent d’Indy, Franck dragged himself once more to his organ at Sainte-Clotilde in order to write down the proper combination of stops for them, leaving the set — “like J. S. Bach a hundred and thirty years earlier” — as “a glorious musical testament.” The manuscript was lying on his death-bed when the priest of Sainte-Clotilde came to bring him the last consolations of the Church. Franck dedicated the three Chorales to the organists Alexandre Guilmant, Théodore Dubois and Eugène Gigout, though, d’Indy notes, other names appear by mistake on the published edition.

The first Choral, in E major, begins with its theme as an accessory part of a larger chorale that arrives only as a conclusion; the second and third, in B and A, are likewise conceived in the great variation form, which d’Indy regarded as Franck’s assimilation of Beethoven’s principle of amplification. The critic Camille Mauclair, quoted by d’Indy, found the Chorales of powerful construction, possessing “a magnificent rectitude directly proceeding from Bach.”

Drawn from Derepas, Gustave (1848-1910), César Franck : étude sur sa vie, son enseignement, son oeuvre (1897); Indy, Vincent d’, 1851-1931, Cesar Franck; a translation from the French of Vincent d’Indy (1922) — public domain, archive.org.