In the last two decades of his long life and extensive musical career, the composer Florent Schmitt would devote much of his energies to creating instrumental music and pieces for voice and choir.

Indeed, by and large Schmitt’s later-career output eschewed the full orchestra — with a number of notable exceptions, among them the Introït, récit et congé for cello and orchestra (1949), the Scènes de la vie moyenne (1950) and the Symphony No. 2, Schmitt’s penultimate composition, dating from 1957.

Another is the Suite sans esprit de suite, Op. 89.  Written for piano and orchestrated by the composer immediately thereafter, this work received its orchestral premiere in January 1938 by the Colonne Concerts Orchestra in Paris.

The suite was fortunate to have its premiere entrusted to the capable hands of Paul Paray (1886-1979), the celebrated French director who premiered more of Florent Schmitt’s orchestral works than any other conductor. Thereafter, the suite was performed at the Baden-Baden Festival of Music in summer 1939. The four-day festival, directed by Gotthelf Lessing, presented new works by three French composers: Jean Rivier’s String Trio and Jean Clergue’s Ballade for Violin and Orchestra in addition to Florent Schmitt’s suite.

Musical America correspondent Geraldine DeCourcy was present at the Baden-Baden Festival and reviewed Schmitt’s composition as follows:

“Schmitt’s Suite sans esprit de suite was illustrative music of the typical European order, in which a series of short episodes, brilliant and pertinent in their orchestral treatment, kept more or less within the bounds of chamber music through an underlying delicacy of line and substance.”

The composition was also presented the following spring at the Nancy Conservatoire, performed by the conservatory orchestra under the direction of composer-conductor Alfred Bachelet, mere weeks before the German invasion was to upend the music world (and everything else) in France.

The Suite had an interesting genesis in that the piece was originally prepared by Schmitt as his submission to an “omnibus” project conceived by the pianist Marguerite Long and music publisher Raymond Deiss — a collection of piano pieces by eight Parisian composers on the theme of the Paris Exposition of 1937.

But Schmitt’s entry was far larger in scope than what had been envisioned by Long and Deiss, whereupon the composer was prevailed upon to withdraw his submission in favor of a much shorter standalone piece by the name of La Retardée. (You can read more about the Deiss project here.)

The Suite sans esprit de suite carries one of Schmitt’s humorous titles that also connotes a double meaning — in this case, the idea that the movements lack coherence to one another.

As the musicologist and author Nicolas Southon has pointed out, the music’s title is nearly impossible to translate.  “Schmitt is playing with the ambiguity of the meaning of the word ‘suite’.  Of course, the first reference is to a musical suite as it has existed since the Baroque era.”

Southon continues, “The second reference — ‘esprit de suite’ — is an idiomatic expression in the French language, meaning something akin to ‘striving for consistency.’  So what Schmitt is telling us, using word play, is that his suite isn’t consistent with the way people commonly think of a musical suite’s characteristics.  It’s also very typical of the play on words we find in the titles of some of Schmitt’s compositions.”

However one chooses to translate the title, the piece is an engaging work that can be enjoyed on many levels.  And in my view, the movements do share a common trait:  each is suggestive of different dance styles, and the spirit of the dance imbues the entire composition.

In the evocative names of the five movements of the Suite, one can clearly sense the composer hearkening back to the earlier days of his great travels.  (Actually, Schmitt would continue to travel the world in the remaining two decades of his life; the musicologist Dr. Jerry Rife has noted that Schmitt’s final passport, issued in 1956 two years before the composer’s death, contains more than 40 visa stamps!)

The five movements of the Suite are as follows:

• Majeza
• Charmilles (Bowers)
• Pécorée de Calabre (Calabrian Peasant Girl)
• Thrène (Threnody)
• Bronx

… in which we can recognize regions of Spain, France, Southern Italy, Greece, and the New World.

In fact, Schmitt had traveled to each of these places.

Majeza opens the suite in showy fashion as a kind of curtain-raiser.  The title refers to a dance style popular in aristocratic circles in 18th Century Madrid … but music critic Frédéric Decaunes has written that it is also remindful of a bossa nova.  It’s an interesting observation considering that in 1938, the bossa nova was still two decades away from breaking out beyond the borders of Brazil. At the top of this movement, the score includes an epigraph that translates into English roughly as follows:

“Provocative and disdainful in turn, the dancer’s supple body undulates and swirls voluptuously. Drinkers stare at her, their eyes glistening with fierce desire.”

In the middle of the movement one can also discern the Spain of Granada, with its North African-inflected harmonies.

The second movement, Charmilles, is also dancelike but in a wholly different way:  It is a dreamy and tender barcarolle. The epigraph hints at this as follows:

“Dreamy young girls wander in the autumnal park: their silky trains brush against the dead leaves. They place themselves in the pool’s waters — then, in the arms of their lovers, disappear through the deep alleys.”

To my ears, the movement is similar in character to Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande — and wholly appropriate, too, in that Fauré had been Schmitt’s great teacher and mentor.

The province of Calabria in Southern Italy is the setting for the sassy middle movement, Pécorée de Calabre.  This is Schmitt’s own take on the gossiping, chattering peasant folk in the town square that was so effectively realized in Mussorgsky’s Limoges – Le Marché movement in Pictures at an Exhibition as orchestrated by Maurice Ravel. As the epigraph for this movement says:

“Boot-heels click rhythmically; the wind lifts the colorful skirts and the high conical hats. Girls and boys leap under the bright sun.”

Jaunty, obstreperous rhythms and chirping woodwinds — they’re all here in Schmitt’s tonal picture.

The Greece of Thrène is not the one inspired by a modern travelogue, but rather by ancient times and lamentations for the dead:

“On the marble slab, a strewn lily. The cypress trees shiver against the azure sky; she sleeps eternally …”

Schmitt’s vision is beautifully realized in the form of a sarabande via delicate, ethereal orchestration, adding “tuneful percussion” such as the celesta for extra effect.

The final movement, Bronx, is a short, exuberant outburst:

“Multicolored drinks sparkle in the glasses … Nostalgic jazz rips the air heavy with alcohol and smoke.”

More sassy than jazzy, we are reminded that Schmitt had visited New York City during his single journey to North America in the early 1930s.  And the music does sound like a foreigner’s take on New York City — it’s hardly “authentic,” but it’s an honest reaction to the gritty, overwhelming presence of America’s largest city. To me, Bronx comes across much like Ferde Grofé’s final movement from his 1955 Hudson River Suite: a brief, primal shout — and an exclamation mark to end the work in a big way.

The piano version of the score is rarely performed, although a 1986 performance by Louise Bessette was broadcast over French Radio.  Likewise, the orchestrated version of the Suite sans esprit de suite appears never to have gained a foothold in the symphonic repertoire, although it did appear on concert programs occasionally during the 1950s — including broadcast performances by the ORTF under the direction of Éric-Paul Stekel (1951), Eugène Bigot (1952) and Henri Tomasi (1955).

To my knowledge, the Suite has never been recorded in its original piano version, but it has received two recordings in its orchestral garb.  Fortunately for us, both of them are quality performances.

The first recording was made by Cybelia in the late 1980s and features the Rhenish State Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of James Lockhart.  Long out of print, the performance is a fine interpretation that deserves to be reissued.

The more recent one features Thierry Fischer conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales — recorded in 2006 and available on the Hyperion label.  Likewise an effective and attractive interpretation, this recording has been uploaded to YouTube and can be heard here.

Even better, for those who would like to hear the piece along with the musical notation, the 1955 broadcast performance of it by the ORTF under the direction of Henri Tomasi has been uploaded along with the score and can be viewed on YouTube, courtesy of Jean-Marie van Bronkhorst’s invaluable music channel.

The Suite sans esprit de suite reminds us that, even as his career moved into its late period, Florent Schmitt had lost none of his powers of orchestration: All of the composer’s masterful skills are on brilliant display here.

Moreover, the music proves that Schmitt’s ability to conjure up the “spirit of the dance” in its varied manifestations remained as effective and engaging as ever.

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Update (7/17/22):  While a commercial recording of the piano version of Suite sans esprit de suite still eludes us, there’s good news in that a live performance of the piece has now appeared on YouTube. The performer is Clément Canonne, a pianist who is also a researcher at the Analysis of Musical Practices research group of the Centre national de recherche scientifique in France (affiliated with IRCAM).

In his pianistic pursuits, Mr. Canonne has been focusing his attention on mid- and late-career pieces by Schmitt that were composed for piano as well as orchestra.  Thanks to him, at last we have the opportunity to hear how the composer treated the five movements of the Suite pianistically — and the results are nothing less than fascinating.

The movements of the piano version have been uploaded separately and can be heard here:

• Majeza
• Charmilles 
• Pécorée de Calabre 
• Thrène 
• Bronx

Reportedly, Mr. Canonne is planning to make a commercial recording of this piece along with several other Schmitt’s piano creations, but for how these live uploads fill the gap nicely.